In at least 29 states, teachers can bring guns to school. But should they?
It's the news that every parent dreads: In April, I was told there had been a shooting in the area around my daughter's school. A gunman had opened fire, and there were casualties. In the minutes before it became clear that she was safe, I was terrified. The shooting followed a familiar pattern: A young man with too many guns and too few friends decided to open fire during school dismissal at a nearby campus. He injured four people before taking his own life. |
Afterward, all I could think about was how inevitable it felt. This is the America where my daughter has been doing regular lockdown drills since pre-K and the names Columbine, Sandy Hook and Parkland are etched into our culture. Still, as a parent, the danger can feel abstract. While I am powerless to keep my child safe when she is away from me at school, I had to believe that others would. |
Then came the slaughter in Uvalde, Texas, last spring, when law enforcement failed catastrophically in their response to a gunman inside an elementary school. The images of frantic parents trying to break through police lines to save their children have opened a new chapter in this national tragedy. If not the police, whom can we trust to protect our kids when they are inside what is supposed to be a refuge of learning? |
Today on the Times Opinion podcast "First Person," we've published part one of a two-part story on the educators who are considering whether to bring guns into their classrooms. America's teachers have to make choices unimaginable anywhere else in the industrialized world. In today's episode, we meet the Utah county sheriff who, after learning that teachers were bringing unsecured guns into classrooms, started a concealed-carry training program for educators. Next week, a special-education teacher has to decide what puts the children in her care more at risk — carrying a gun or facing a merciless killer without a defense. |
No one in these stories fits into our neatly polarized narratives: They are people who are trying to do the best they can for their communities and for themselves, at a time of rampant gun violence, when the choices for parents, students and teachers are all overwhelmingly bad. |
As I was writing this newsletter, I learned of another school shooting, this one in St. Louis. One teacher told The Times that, as she heard rounds of gunfire outside of her classroom, she was "mentally preparing for how to defend my kids." She added: "You get into this head space: I will do whatever it takes, and I will protect you however I have to. I know that's how the teachers were in this moment. Those are our kids." In the end, two people were killed; one of them, Jean Kuczka, was a 61-year-old teacher who died trying to protect her students. |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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