Arming Tennessee’s Teachers
Terry H. Schwadron
April 25, 2024
The vote in the Tennessee Legislature this week to allow some trained teachers and staff to carry concealed handguns in class is one of those you-be-the-judge of effective policymaking.
Mind you, the new law, which awaits Gov. Bill Lee’s signature, would put more guns in school but keep information about whether teachers might be carrying a weapon from parents, students, or colleagues. It would require minimal gun training for participating teachers, but not force teachers to carry guns.
There is no guidance in the bill about when it is appropriate — or legal — for teachers to pull out a weapon, about liability for harm that may result, consequences for whether arriving police confusion about the source of gunfire and the like.
There certainly is an expectation, without evidence, that a teacher can simultaneously protect school children and focus on an elusive attacker without injury or unintended harm.
As always, there is a kernel of need here, perhaps for some rural districts where police response to an emergency might take more time than desired, but this is solving a gun violence problem by putting more weapons in play during the stress of a loosed gunman.
As with most simple solutions to complicated problems, it is too easy, too ideological rather than effective, and ignores even the most obvious set of problems that appear inevitable.
But you judge whether you belonged in the legislative gallery joining chants of “Kids Deserve More!” and “Have You Lost Your Ever-Loving Minds?” before troopers were summoned to clear the hall or part of the Republican majority who were talking up more guns as a common-sense answer to growing school shootings, as has been authorized in about half the states.
Tennessee and Guns
Tennessee has emerged as a bellwether state on guns since a shooting just over a year ago at a private Christian school in Nashville left three students and three staff members dead. That attack got parents and Governor Lee to demand action that could prevent similar violence.
The legislature’s Republican, anti-gun safety supermajority ejected two Democratic members some months ago for aiding anti-gun efforts in ways that Speaker Cameron Sexton had said disrupted House proceedings — only to have those same Democrats re-appointed and reelected by their districts.
This week’s bill passed overwhelmingly, despite opposition from Democrats and some Republicans, and the governor, who has never vetoed a bill, is expected to either sign it or let it become law without his signature.
Armed teachers will be required to undergo 40 hours of training — presumably on their own dime — obtain their own weapon and notify only the school principal, the district supervisory and the local police chief. Oddly, the legislation also requires criminal and mental health background checks for the teachers involved — while legislators look askance at such details for the general population. No handgun can be carried in auditoriums or stadiums during school events, during disciplinary or tenure meetings, or in a clinic.
Among the amendments rejected were attempts to require teachers to keep handguns locked up except during a school security breach, holding teachers civilly liable for using their handgun on campus, and informing parents when guns are on campus.
These are the same legislative ideologues who insist that parents approve of books in the school library or listen as parents complain about who uses what bathroom, but don’t see it important to include parents in a decision about who goes to school packing a pistol.
Whether arming teachers is an effective strategy, of course, remains an open question, but the likelihood of unintended complications and consequences seems reasonable to project. What happens if a student is harmed? What if the teacher leaves the gun unattended and a student picks it up? Will the required training be target practice or high-stress situations in which even police veterans miss armed targets?
The Voices and Guns
Sponsor Rep. Ryan Williams, a Republican, said his bill was aimed to protect students and act as a deterrent for potential school security threats. He noted an earlier law had allowed some school districts in “distressed” counties, an economic indicator established by the state, to opt into a teacher handgun carry program. “As a parent of public school kids, my kids are grown now, people ask me all the time: Have you done everything you could possibly do to make our schools safe across the state? I believe that this is the method by which we can do that,” Williams said.
Decisions would be required for each participating teacher rather than for an entire district or community, which Williams said might tell would-be gunmen which districts were under-protected. Williams said secrecy would keep gun behavior from being a factor in hiring and firing decisions.
Voices from the other side of the argument were quick to call the move a “disaster and tragedy waiting to happen,” and bemoaned not only the strategy of arming teachers, but the consequences of secrecy and lack of constraints.
Williams said the bill seeks to shield gun carriers’ identities to protect them from related “hiring and firing decisions.”
The critics argue that bringing more weapons onto school campuses would not improve safety and could even amplify the danger facing students. “I’ve heard so many times about parental consent, that it’s a parent’s responsibility to raise their child,” Rep. Justin Pearson, D-Memphis told The New York Times,calling, the bill “absolutely insane,” adding “it’s a parent’s job to know if their child is being put at risk by having someone in the classroom with a firearm that another child could find, that could be discharged and actually harm them or other kids.”
JC Bowman, executive director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, said his statewide professional association viewed the legislation as poorly thought out. He planned to encourage its members not to carry guns because of the liability concerns.
Apparently in Tennessee, the legislature feels sure. In the classroom, not so much.
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