Arming Teachers Essay

Can you imagine a safe place where you know threats could be stopped easily and a chance of a threat hurting you is smaller? This may seem like a police station or some sort of government facility, but actually in today’s world this is changing because schools are being armed with weapons to defend against the outside world where threats are closing in. With this idea in mind, arming teachers is the solution to a growing epidemic of school shootings. Armed teachers and staff will provide the protection necessary for students to consistently feel safe in their schools.

Arming teachers aims to provide the peace of mind and safety to students. In today’s society, some students would view arming teachers as a threat instead of a protection precaution.

Teachers that have been armed and trained for a school premises exercise the right judgements just like a law enforcement officer would on the field of duty. Ashley May, a journalist from USA Today, reports “the average time required for teachers to train and carry arms in schools is 132 hours” proves how teachers are specified to carry arms in a school presence. The numerous hours of training can justify how teachers and school staff will know how to handle and operate a firearm in a classroom or tragic event correctly. The average amount of training time teachers and school staff need to carry a weapon on a school premises can provide students with the knowledge that the teachers and school staff know what they are doing with these arms whenever they may or may not need to use them.
The teachers and school staff who carry arms at school can save more students in a quicker fasson than even law enforcement officers could.

Philip Bump, a correspondent from The Washington Post, inquiries that fighting fire with fire is an effective strategy to deter and end school shootings because arming school staff and teachers will make the threat think twice about the act he or she is about to commit. This important thought from Bump is intriguing because it provides students with the knowledge that their school is immediately safer because threats who want to commit a horrific crime and still survive are in trouble due to these trained school staff and teachers who decide to carry in schools. Followed up by Donald J. Trump, the current 45th president of the U.S., implies, “It takes five to eight minutes for responders - for the police to come in. So the attack is over. If you had a teacher with - who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly” (qtd in Bump). The significance of arming teachers with arms in school isn’t to completely stop school shootings but to make them less serious because teachers can eliminate the threat quicker than when police officers would arrive. Students need to push the idea forward in their minds that even if there were more restrictions on weaponry so they were harder to get, the threat will still somehow get a weapon to commit the gruesome act, but this act can be neutralized quicker and faster if teachers

were armed because unfortunately law enforcement officers can’t be everywhere at one time.
Arming teachers verses placing armed officers at a school premises is better for the economy, tax payers, and well roundness of the connection between students, teachers, and other school staff.

According to the statistics from the President of the National School Safety and Security Services whose name is Kenneth S. Trump, it’s more effective to arm teachers with weapons because it will cheaper, be more effective in regards to numbers of trained individuals, save everyone tax dollars, and make students feel more secure with knowing who in their school is carrying the weapons, not just some random officers that are paid to protect the school incase a threat would happen to collide with the school. To explain the benefits by using data from the Department of Education and the National Rifle Association, there are a total of 3.1 million school teachers in the U.S. and the main goal would be to arm about 1/5 of these teachers, so the total would be around 718,000 teachers (Trump). One may ask what is significant about 718,000 armed teachers in schools, and the answer is that this amount is just smaller than the quantity of personal combined in the Army and Navy, which means that America would add almost 50% more armed and ready personal to society to protect the innocent (Trump). Speaking generally, if all the 718,000 teachers obtaining appropriate training, glocks, and supplies would be a one time cost of 251 million to 1 billion dollars to arm these teachers. Putting this in

perspective to replacing these armed teachers with armed law enforcement, it would cost an average of 12 billion to 15 billion a year to place 6 to 8 guards at about 156,000 public and private schools (Trump). With these statistics in mind, it is important to note that the price difference between arming teachers and law enforcement officers at a school premises is substantial because this money is coming precisely from government tax dollars, which all of our parents, including us in the future, will pay out of our paychecks. In conclusion, by arming teachers instead of law enforcement officers in schools, the students can better acknowledge who is handling the weapons in a school, save schools important tax dollars that can be spent for other necessities, and bring a sense of security to students for the purpose of knowing the teacher who can provide a strong defense for the student if a threat happens to obscure the normal safety a school should always possess.