"We heard people say do something and this is something, a significant something," Sen. Terry Johnson, R-McDermott, said. "And it needs to be done."
A bill allowing education staff to carry guns in schools with reduced training was passed by the Ohio Senate Wednesday.
On the heels of a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school that left 21 people dead, the Senate voted 23-9 to approve House Bill 99, sponsored by Rep. Thomas Hall (R-Madison Township). HB 99 would allow any adult in a public or private school carry a concealed firearm in a school’s safety zone if a district so chooses — without the 737 hours of peace officer training currently required.
(Maeve Walsh and Mark Feuerborn. “Guns for teachers: Ohio Senate passes bill.” NBC 4. June 01, 2022.)
All that would be required under a proposed bill to allow adults in school to carry a gun is 24 hours of firearms training.
A Democrat amendment to increase training to a minimum of 152 hours was defeated.
By comparison, a police officer gets no less than 60 hours.
The Fraternal Order of Police, religious groups, and nearly every teacher's union in the state have refused to support the bill. At a hearing before the Senate Veterans and Public Safety Committee Tuesday, the overwhelming majority of speakers who testified spoke in opposition of the bill, including many individual teachers and representatives from the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police and Ohio Federation of Teachers.
"It's a bad idea, but if you are going to go down this path, please don't rush it, " said Scott DiMauro, the president of the Ohio Education Association.
Elizabeth Overmier, with Brady United Against Gun Violence, testified more guns in schools would create issues for students.
“Adding armed staff will increase not decrease student anxiety,” Overmier said. “Ohio students deserve better than House Bill 99.”
The bill, which passed the House in a 59-33 vote in November, will now be sent back for a concurrence vote. If approved for a second time by the House, the bill will make its way to the desk of Gov. Mike DeWine – who said in late May that he asked the Ohio General Assembly to pass the bill to implement “adequate, scenario-based training” for education staff.
Under the bill, school staff who wish to carry a handgun are required to undergo only 24 hours of training, as opposed to the current 737-hour peace officer training requirement. Schools are free to require more than the 24 hours mandated by the bill.
The training breaks down as follows:
18 hours of general training
Two hours of handgun training
Two hours of “additional” general training
Two hours of “additional” handgun training
It’s unclear whether Ohio’s upcoming “constitutional carry” gun law – which permits Ohioans aged 21 and up to carry a gun without a concealed carry permit – will have an effect on this requirement for teachers.
(Maeve Walsh and Mark Feuerborn. “Guns for teachers: Ohio Senate passes bill.” NBC 4. June 01, 2022.)
Individual school districts will have to pay for their own training.
In addittion, the bill doesn't require school boards to notify parents when they arm teachers or staff, but it doesn't prohibit them from sharing that information either.
"We cannot wait for a gun to go off to discover that our school district has armed the wrong person, or failed to give them proper training," southwest Ohio firefighter and parent Ben Adams told a committee last year.
Democrats pointed to one such example from northeast Ohio.
Highland Elementary School in South Bloomfield Township authorized its staff to carry guns. But parents didn't know until a first-grader found his grandmother's gun while hanging out unattended in a classroom and pointed it at another student's head.
Would anyone outside a district know which school personnel was armed?
The Senate did add a provision requiring schools to submit a list of all authorized personnel to the newly created Ohio School Safety and Crisis Center
HB 99 doesn't address additional money for mental health services, school counselors, and trained school resource officers.
(Anna Staver. “What's inside the bill to arm Ohio teachers as it heads to the Gov. DeWine? The Columbus Dispatch. June 01, 2022.)
Arming Teachers
Mr. Johnson and other Ohio Republicans wanted to “do something,” so they are putting guns in the hands of teachers, who are more likely to suffer job-related stress than other professionals. No wonder police and educational associations believe this is a very bad idea.
In 2019, a study by the National Foundation for Educational Research revealed that one in five teachers feels tense about their job all or most of the time, compared with one in eight workers in similar professions.
Teacher stress is at an all-time high. Nearly 50 percent of teachers report high daily stress during the school year. This stress is caused by dwindling school budgets that impact their resources and salaries, growing numbers of students coming to school with challenging educational and behavioral problems, demanding parents and unsupportive administrations.
On top of this, measures that apply untested and questionable accountability measures and reduce teacher autonomy and instructional creativity have resulted in dramatic reductions in job satisfaction and an increase in teacher burnout and turnover. Indeed, the nation is facing a serious and growing teacher shortage.
College students do not enter the teaching curriculum to tote guns. If some now would, what does that say about teacher qualifications and possible outcomes? More guns will negatively change the public educational system. High stress and more firearms are not part of an equation on campuses to curb gun violence and mass shootings.
Of course, teachers affect their students. When teachers feel stress, their students feel stress, too, and we now know that the stress response interferes with brain functions that are critical to academic learning. The stress response also interferes with perception.
Stressed out teachers often misinterpret student behaviors and may take them personally, scenarios more likely to result in unfair disciplinary measures and interfere with student-teacher relationships. Teacher turnover also negatively impacts student learning. The cost of teacher turnover is estimated to be over $7 billion per year, costs schools now faced with dwindling resources for instruction cannot afford.
In February 2018, Jane Kelly of University of Virginia Today, interviewed Tish Jennings, an expert with extensive research on the effects of stress on teachers and an associate professor in the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. Kelly asked Jennings about how arming teachers with guns would affect the learning environment and stress situation.
Jennings said …
“Given what I know as a former teacher and a scientist who studies teacher stress, I would expect that more guns in schools wielded by teachers would be extremely dangerous and would negatively impact the learning environment.
“Teachers spend a great deal of time and energy creating and maintaining an emotionally supportive learning environment because they know that kids learn best when they feel safe and connected to their school community. When a teacher is feeling stress and she over-reacts to student behavior, her reaction erodes the relationships with her students and the healthy school environment.
“The trained law enforcement officer who was stationed at the Parkland, Florida, school froze, rather than using his training to protect the students. If a trained officer froze, how likely would teachers freeze under similar conditions, especially when their stress response is already heightened.
“More weapons in schools pose an additional danger. How will they be kept safe? Over the past 50 years, our schools have been designed to look more like prisons than warm learning environments. I’m afraid that arming teachers will put the last nail in the coffin. I agree with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School math teacher Jim Gard quoted in the Washington Post: 'If it gets to the point where we have to arm our teachers, then we have completely failed, completely failed as a society.'”
(Jane Kelly. “At the Intersection of Teachers, Stress and Guns.” UVA Today. February 23, 2018.)
The Reality
Prevailing logic says that an armed society is a polite society and that fewer people consider committing crimes if they believe that they may be around someone who’s armed. But research shows that non-threatening situations such as road rage and intimate partner violence are much more likely to escalate into deadly encounters when there’s a firearm involved. What deterrence does access to guns really offer?
(Patt Morrison. “Column: Does carrying a gun make you safer? No. In fact, right-to-carry laws increase violent crime.” Los Angeles Times. August 02, 2017.
Studies suggest that arming 20% of the nation’s 3.2 million school teachers could result in an increase in crime across the board. John J. Donohue III, a Stanford law professor, used more than 30 years of research to determine that right-to-carry laws increase violent crime in states by up to 15% over a 10-year period.
Estimates say that arming 20% of the nation’s school teachers would also put over 600,000 more guns into circulation. Research shows that people who routinely carry guns outside the home are at least three times as likely to have one stolen. So arming teachers would, in turn, increase the number of illegally owned guns in circulation.
(Tod Perry. “Research Shows Why It’s A Terrible Idea To Arm School Teachers." https://www.good.is/articles/arming-school-teachers-research. March 02, 2018.)
Here is the bottom line: School safety advocates warn about the potential risks of encouraging teachers to carry guns at school – increasing the number of guns in schools, even if they were put in the hands of responsible educators, may increase the likelihood of gun-related harm. Studies have also shown a direct correlation between the presence of guns and increased gun violence.
(Lisa Hepburn and David Hemenway. “Firearm availability and homicide: A review of the literature. Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal. 9:417-40. 2004.)
Various other studies suggest guns don’t really deter crime and instead increase the likelihood of gun-related violence. In other words, more guns simply lead to more gun violence. In one study in 2015, for example, researchers at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard University found that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in states with the most guns compared to states with the least.
(Natasha Ishak. “Pro-gun rights lawmakers want to arm teachers, but there’s little evidence these programs work.” https://www.vox.com/2022/5/29/23145515/pro-gun-lawmakers-arm-teachers-violence. Vox. May 29, 2022.)
Potential problems with arming teachers?
Securing the firearms.
Training.
Juggling duties as enforcement officers.
Chaos of the classroom.
Most teachers don't want to be security guards.
In a crisis, how will law enforcement be able to distinguish between a lawfully carrying teacher and a bad guy?
Conclusion
Ohio lawmakers, I don't understand you. It seems the American fever for violence has infected you with considerable rage and vengeance. Gun violence has clouded your perceptions, and you concentrate now on destroying hatred and mental illness with an “eye-for-an-eye” mentality and hot lead. I cannot imagine myself and the teachers I taught with packing weapons to class every day. We surely would soon have become frustrated and disgruntled with a role of armed security guard. Not only that, but we most likely would have been unable to respond with skill and accuracy in an armed conflict.
We should stop gun violence at its roots. We must enact evidence-based measures to limit gun ownership to individuals suffering mental from illness and to those with questionable motives. School counselors are worked to the quick with details of class scheduling, registration, state testing, college preparation, and other record keeping duties. They need to be allowed to better know their student bodies – their problems, their desires, their plans. These counselors and school psychologists must be freed from clerical tasks to discover potential threats and problems on campus. Teachers and counselors are very good at those things. They are trained to love, respect, and help children, not to fire weapons. Carelessly putting guns in their midst poses so many risks.
Consider that the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association, National PTA, the National Association of School Psychologists, and the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio reject the idea of arming school personnel; and the National Association of School Resource Officers recommends that if school personnel are to be armed their training should be on par with law enforcement positions.
And earlier this year, The Ohio Supreme Court ruled in Gabbard v. Madison Local School District Bd of Education that school personnel cannot carry firearms on school grounds unless they have completed basic police officer training or have at least 20 years of experience as a police officer. Yet lawmakers are trying to negate that decision.
The average number of initial training hours that a law enforcement officer receives at a basic-training academy is 840. On average, recruits receive 168 hours of training on weapons, self-defense, and the use of force.
(Brian A. Reaves, “State and Local Law Enforcement Training Academies, 2013” (US Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2016),
Did you know that insurance companies are hesitant to insure schools that arm teachers or staff because they understand the financial and legal risks associated with doing so. When several districts in Kansas sought to arm teachers, the insurance companies informed them that they would not insure such a dangerous practice. Even where schools are able to obtain insurance, it is often at a higher premium. This is because insurance companies realize that guns carried by teachers pose numerous safety risks.
(Michael Hiltzik, “One Big Problem with the Idea of Arming Teachers: Insurance Companies Won’t Play along, and for Good Reason.” Los Angeles Times. February 26, 2018.))
God bless the teachers, the administrators, and their students in Ohio. Lawmakers will put firearms in their schools while blindly trusting poorly trained, nervous fingers to squeeze the triggers at only the “bad guys.” But, the resulting collateral damage may be impossible to bear. The research certainly bears that out.
“Access to a firearm triples the risk of death by suicide and doubles the risk of death by homicide. Access is not only a risk, it is a reality.”
(Andrew Anglemyer, Tara Horvath, and George Rutherford, “The Accessibility of Firearms and Risk for Suicide and Homicide Victimization among Household Members: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,”Annals of Internal Medicine 160, no. 2. 2014.)
Take Action
RAPID RESPONSE REQUESTED - Tell Governor DeWine to stop endangering the lives of innocent children and school personnel and VETO SUB House Bill 99.
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Read More
I urge you to read “Keeping Our Schools Safe: A Plan for Preventing Mass Shootings and Ending All Gun Violence in American Schools” by Everytown Research & Policy.
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