For The Children

Well, when I phrase it that absurdly, it doesn't make sense, does it?

No better than it does in reality.  

The Gun Free Zone Act of 1990 is directly responsible for the rise in shootings occurring in schools.

When you take away the idea of "deterrence", you significantly change the risk assessment that happens in the mind of a future attacker.

You made it MORE attractive, not less. pic.twitter.com/Vrq8S4dEmB

— Feni𝕏 Ammunition (@FenixAmmunition) March 14, 2023

It turns out spree killers specifically seek out targets that can't resist:

When the Aurora, Colorado Batman movie theater shooter attacked, seven movie theaters were showing “The Dark Knight Rises” on July 20th within 20 minutes of the killer’s apartment at 1690 Paris St, Aurora, Colorado, but the killer picked the only theater that had signs posted that it was a gun-free zone. His first target had been an airport, but he worried about their “substantial security.” Similar stories have occurred at malls such as in Omaha and Salt Lake City or the Lafayette, Louisiana, movie theater. Despite teachers carrying guns in schools in 20 states, all the shooting attacks at schools have occurred in schools that ban teachers from having guns.

Given that people are allowed to carry their permitted concealed handguns in the vast majority of public places, if these mass public shootings were random, 95% or higher of these attacks would take place in areas where permitted concealed handguns were allowed. Instead, the reverse is true, with 94% of those attacks taking place where general citizens are banned from having guns.

Now, we have many examples of "good guys and gals with guns" stopping mass shootings, sometimes in ways that look make Jason Bourne look like Jason Alexander, other times less spectacularly but just as effectively.   Indeed, given that there is a documented correlation between "gun free zones" and ghastly gun crimes, it'd seem that the logical response is to stop making schools into easy soft targets. 

That is just inconceivable for some of the usual suspects:

Our leaders should instead pursue evidence-based interventions, for example: Extreme Risk laws can stop people who show warning signs of danger to themselves or others from accessing and buying guns. Secure storage awareness can address the most common source of guns used in school gun violence—those taken from home. And schools can invest in mental health professionals and create crisis intervention programs that identify and intervene when a student is a risk to themselves or others.

When you look at the number of spree killers who were "on the radar" of various authorities - to say nothing the bizarre mismatch of trying to get a spree shooter on "safe storage" charges, the objection doesn't so much "fall apart" as it appears to be either faith-based, or a matter of social aesthetics.  

The idea that teachers - whom we trust with students safety in every other possible way, and who have to pass the same kind of background checks gun buyers have to clear - can't be morally or ethically trusted to protect their students seems illogical, because it empirically is illogical and counterfactual.  

But what about the actual statistics? 

There actually is a test sample: about 5% of American school districts, in 20 states, allow teachers and other qualified staff to carry legal, concealed firearms on the job.  Some jurisdictions require training and certification, others allow teachers to act like other citizens.  

But while the rules vary, the results seem pretty clear so far:

After the Columbine school shooting 20 years ago, one of the more significant changes in how we protect students has been the advance of legislation that allows teachers to carry guns at schools. There are two obvious questions: Does letting teachers carry create dangers? Might they deter attackers? Twenty states currently allow teachers and staff to carry guns to varying degrees on school property, so we don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns. Fears of teachers carrying guns in terms of such problems as students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all, and there was only one accidental discharge outside of school hours with no one was really harmed. While there have not been any problems at schools with armed teachers, the number of people killed at other schools has increased significantly – doubling between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.

I'll draw attention to the red line at the bottom of this graph:

 Credit:  
Crime Policy Research CenterThat red line at the bottom?  That's stuck at "zero".  There have been no shootings on school grounds, during school hours, at any of the roughly 1,000 school districts that have dropped the "gun free zone" label, and told potential spree killers that they are a hard target. 

People have been noticing that the experiment has been successful - and states are starting to recognize it; Wyoming just joined Alabama, Oregon, Utah and New Hampshire in allowing qualified adults - school staffers, from principals and teachers all the way down to the lunch lady (who also has to pass a background check) to carry their legally-permitted firearms without any special official muss and fuss. 

Anti-gun groups and teachers unions have squawked about it.  Given the very different records of "gun free" and "harder target" districts, one wonders what is more important to those groups; kids, or social aesthetics?