School Safety and Arming Teachers: Overview

Introduction

In the early twenty-first century, mass shootings became a prominent social issue in the United States, sparking intense debate over numerous complex topics including gun culture, gun control, mental health, and public safety. Some of the most notorious incidents were school shootings, which highlighted additional questions about youth violence, access to firearms, and the US education system itself. Each high-profile school shooting tended to set off a wave of discussion about how to prevent such tragedies in the future. But while many experts recommended stricter gun control measures in line with those of other developed nations, such proposals faced stiff political opposition, particularly from conservatives citing the right to bear arms laid out in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. As a result, various other options to improve school safety also gained attention. One of the most controversial has been the idea of arming teachers or other school staff.

The basic argument in favor of arming school personnel is that doing so would potentially deter would-be shooters, while also allowing prompter, more effective response if an active shooter situation does occur. This is a version of the broader "good guys with guns" approach to tackling gun violence. In this view, gun-free school zones are essentially easy targets for bad actors looking to inflict maximum casualties on a population with little means of fighting back. They cite examples in which police arrived too late or were otherwise ineffective in stopping a shooter. Proponents also see arming teachers or staff as much more cost-effective than hiring dedicated security officers. The idea attracted considerable attention in the 2010s and 2020s, especially through support from prominent conservative politicians such as President Donald Trump.

The concept of arming teachers and school staff has also faced heavy criticism, however. Opponents reject the assertion that armed staff would have a deterrent effect or fundamentally improve the response to an active shooter, pointing to multiple studies challenging the "good guys with guns" hypothesis. They also cite numerous examples of mass shootings where armed security was present and failed to halt or prevent numerous deaths. Critics further argue that placing guns in schools would significantly increase the risk of accidental shootings, crimes of passion, racially biased discipline, and other negative outcomes.

Understanding the Discussion

Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence: A national law center named for Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was severely injured in a 2011 assassination attempt. The center tracks state and local gun regulations and provides legal assistance to promote gun control.

Gun-Free School Zones Act: Federal law passed in 1990 that institutes criminal penalties for the “possession or discharge of a firearm in a school zone, with specified exceptions, including the possession or discharge by an individual as part of a school program or by a law enforcement officer acting in an official capacity.”

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting: Attack on February 14, 2018, in Parkland, Florida, in which a former high school student opened fire, killing seventeen people and wounding seventeen others. This incident spurred unprecedented national demands for gun control, many by students themselves.

National Rifle Association (NRA): An influential gun-rights advocacy organization that was founded in 1871.

History

Mass shootings have occurred throughout US history, but the modern conception of the term did not develop until the late twentieth century. School shootings, in particular, are largely seen as a contemporary phenomenon, although there are some historical precedents. Some historians cite an attack on a schoolhouse in south-central Pennsylvania in 1764 during Pontiac’s War as the first school shooting. In this incident, four American Indian men entered a schoolhouse and shot schoolmaster Enoch Brown and then killed nine children. Others point to the 1840 shooting of University of Virginia law professor John A. G. Davis by UVA student Joseph Semmes after Davis tried to break up a student disturbance. A Psychology Today article from December 2012 identified the 1927 killing of thirty-seven children and seven adults by debt-ridden Michigan farmer Andrew Kehoe as “America’s first school massacre,” though bombs, rather than guns, were employed in that case.

Though it was certainly not the first school shooting, or even the deadliest on record, the April 20, 1999, shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado proved a turning point in consideration of the issue, sparking an unprecedented public outcry in the United States. Two students killed twelve classmates, a teacher, and themselves, and the incident received intense national media coverage. From that point, school shootings became flashpoints for public debate over guns and related issues—debate that also increasingly became part of the so-called culture wars amid deepening partisan political polarization in American society. There was also a perceived uptick in the frequency of mass shootings in the early twenty-first century, with many observers noting that the US far outpaced other developed nations. Between 1999 and 2018, there were twenty-five school shootings, defined as “fatal, active school shootings at elementary and high schools in America.” These incidents, though still statistically extremely rare, were widely publicized, and the fear of such horrific events spurred heated debate over how to prevent future shootings.

Opinion and resulting public policy around school safety remained polarized, however. Some held that gun control measures are the key component in a positive solution, but others staunchly objected to any perceived infringement on the right to bear arms. Gun-rights advocates, notably including the National Rifle Association (NRA), asserted strong political influence. The result was generally a stalemate on gun reform at the federal level. Congress passed only one meaningful related piece of legislation by the end of the 2010s, which enhanced the sharing of mental health data for background checks in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting. In January 2013, following the deadly 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, President Barack Obama enacted twenty-three executive orders aimed at reducing gun violence, including strengthening restrictions on gun sales, launching public awareness campaigns, and providing support for mental health screening and resources for schools. Still, comprehensive reform remained a political non-starter. Meanwhile, state legislation on the issue also reflected political partisanship, with some states (typically liberal-leaning ones) enacting stringent gun control measures and others (typically conservative-leaning) loosening or eliminating restrictions.

Amid this deadlock, some observers suggested alternative measures to improve school safety. One of these was the idea of arming teachers or other school staff to discourage potential attackers and allow for more effective self-defense. The federal Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSZA) of 1990 had made it unlawful to knowingly possess a firearm in an elementary or secondary school zone. However, state and local laws allowing for the possession of firearms were acknowledged to supersede the federal prohibition; exceptions were regularly made for security officers, for instance. Therefore, the issue of arming teachers fell largely to state legislatures and local authorities, and a patchwork of laws emerged across the country. By the late 2010s, about half the states allowed school districts to set their own policy about individuals allowed to carry guns on school grounds. Eight states explicitly allowed school employees to carry licensed firearms at school, and others had generally lenient laws about concealed carry in schools. However, disparate reporting requirements meant it was unclear how many schools actually had armed teachers or staff.

The concept of arming teachers gained particular momentum after the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting. As debate over school safety dominated headlines, NRA president Wayne LaPierre remarked at a press conference that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun." Some schools embraced this view, and while some increased the presence of armed security guards, others took steps to allow teachers or administrators to carry firearms. A few districts gained attention for developing armed-response plans that included guns stored in safes at schools.

The Republican-backed Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, first introduced to Congress in 2015, also stirred attention to the issue of guns in schools. The bill included a provision to make permitted concealed-carry exceptions to GFSZA valid across state lines. The proposed legislation did not pass committee after it was first introduced, but it was reintroduced several times over the following years. It was passed by the House in 2017, but stalled in the Senate.

School Safety and Arming Teachers Today

Debate over arming teachers and other school staff saw another wave of heightened public interest in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Notably, President Donald Trump emerged as an especially high-profile supporter of guns in schools. He expressed skepticism of gun-free school zones during his 2016 election campaign and early on in his first term. However, it was his remarks after the February 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, (also known as the Parkland shooting) that particularly renewed attention to the issue. Trump tweeted in March 2018, “If schools are mandated to be gun free zones, violence and danger are given an open invitation to enter. Almost all school shootings are in gun free zones. Cowards will only go where there is no deterrent!”

The Trump administration suggested that the federal government would help states provide teachers with firearms training. Betsy DeVos, secretary of education at the time and a leading proponent of allowing schools to arm teachers, was tasked with studying remedies to school violence. In August 2018, the New York Times reported that DeVos’s education policy plan included the possibility of using federal funds to purchase guns for teachers, which the NRA favored. Most education advocates, including the National Education Association, came out strongly against this plan, and the possibility of federal education money being used to purchase firearms to be carried in schools provoked strong reactions in the public and in the media. Ultimately, there was no major federal action on arming teachers during Trump's first term. However, reports suggested a growing number of states and local school districts allowing school staff to carry firearms. One policy that earned national media coverage was Florida's 2018 authorization of a statewide "school marshal" program that would provide training for teachers to carry firearms in classrooms. The controversial plan, which was passed by the state legislature with Republican support and Democratic opposition, was prominently criticized by most survivors and families of the Parkland shooting.

Views on school safety and gun violence, including the prospect of arming teachers, remained largely divided along political party lines at both the federal and state levels under the administration of President Joe Biden (2021–25). The issue was thrust back into the spotlight by a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022 that killed nineteen fourth graders and two teachers. That incident spurred Congress to pass the first significant federal gun control law in decades, although even Biden and other proponents of the bill considered it a starting compromise rather than a comprehensive solution to gun violence. Many conservatives, meanwhile, staunchly opposed that legislation and other gun reform proposals. Texas attorney general Ken Paxton was one notable Republican official who instead argued in favor of arming teachers in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting. Ohio Republicans passed a state law in June 2022 reducing the required training time for teachers to be allowed to carry a firearm at school from 700 hours to 24 hours. Some polls and studies in the early 2020s suggested growing public support for armed teachers and school staff, but most research indicated enduring high levels of opposition from teachers, students, and parents.

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