SCHOOLE SECURITYU.S. Schools Increase Security, and Some Arm Teachers
As classes are about to resume, many school districts have sought to boost security. Some are arming teachers to provide a line of defense against school shooters. It remains to be seen whether teachers toting firearms will save lives or do more harm than good.
Students across the United States are returning to classrooms for the start of a new school year. As classes resume, many school districts have sought to boost security. Some are arming teachers to provide a line of defense against school shooters.
It remains to be seen whether teachers toting firearms will save lives or do more harm than good.
Calls for protecting the nation’s more than 50 million public school students and staff have grown louder since the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, in May. An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two adults.
Months after the tragedy, the attack still haunts some students. “I want to go to school knowing that me and my fellow students are safe,” said high school student Tony Williams from Manassas, Virginia.
Williams doesn’t agree with arming educators but believes stronger measures are needed. “We should have more armed school security officers, more metal detectors and reinforced locked doors at all entrances,” he told VOA.
Ninth grader Rebecca McKenzie from Georgia said she would feel safer with armed teachers in the classroom. “They need to be well trained in using firearms and have easy access to a gun if a person attacks the school.”
School Security Response
In the wake of some of the nation’s deadliest school shootings over the past decade, gun rights activists and Republican state lawmakers have pushed for training and arming school personnel to become a first line of defense in active shooter situations.
Following the Texas school shooting, President Joe Biden signed into law the first federal gun control measure in three decades. “There are too many other schools, too many other everyday places that have become killing fields, battlefields here in America,” Biden said in June.
While the legislation is modest, it does impose new regulations on gun ownership that will tighten background checks for would-be gun purchasers convicted of domestic violence or significant crimes as juveniles. Republicans ruled out stiffer measures such as a ban on assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, favored by Democrats and Biden.
Ohio Republican Governor Mike DeWine in June signed a law that allows teachers who receive 24 hours of training to carry a gun in schools. “School safety goes much beyond the headline; it goes much beyond the tragedies that we see in schools when there is a school shooter,” DeWine said earlier this month at a school safety conference.
