Democrat Assemblyman Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento) is pushing a bill to guarantee teachers will be unarmed and unable to shoot back should an attack occur — though there have been zero incidents or accidents with armed teachers in California.
McCarty’s bill, AB 424, repeals school administrators’ authority to grant permission for teachers with concealed carry permits to carry firearms on campus for defense of themselves and their students.
Currently five California school districts have approved armed teachers. They include Kern High School District, Kingsburg Joint Union High School District, Folsom Cordova Unified School District, Anderson Union High School District, and Palo Cedro’s North Cow Creek School District.
McCarty is pushing AB 424 even though armed teachers have not done anything wrong. In fact, concealed carry permit holders in general have not done anything wrong on a campus in California.
The Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott used an op-ed in the Orange County Register to explain:
Prior to the early 1990s, there were no state laws specifically restricting concealed carry on K-12 property. In 2015, when California became the first state in at least 40 years to pass a law restricting concealed carry on school grounds, no one could point to a single incident in California. That hasn’t changed in the last two years.
Lott pointed out that those opposed to teachers being armed for self-defense often argue that students or attackers will simply take guns away from armed teachers. But he observed that this claim is groundless, as it “has never happened.” Moreover, “excluding off-hours firearms training on school grounds, there has only been one accidental discharge involving a permit holder on K-12 property. This happened in Utah in 2014, and resulted in only a very minor injury.”
Across 25 states that currently allow concealed carry on K-12 campuses, the only incident that can be cited is that accidental discharge.
On the other hand, the fruit of gun-free campuses is stomach-turning. After all, Sandy Hook Elementary was a gun-free campus — the very kind of campus Assemblyman McCarty wants to force on all school districts throughout California. When the attacker entered that school, he had over nine minutes without any armed resistance. The only option left for teachers and students was to shelter in place and throw objects — books, erasers, etc., — if the attacker entered their room. Or the teachers could sacrifice themselves, charging the attacker and losing their lives the way Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung did.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.