Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is fighting to ensure Arkansas teachers cannot shoot back if present when one of their schools is attacked.
Legislation to arm teachers is expected early in Arkansas’s 2019 legislative session, and Moms Demand is already claiming armed teachers would make students less safe.
ABC 7 quoted Moms Demand’s Austin Bailey saying, “We know that the answer is not to arm your teachers, because we know putting guns in the classroom increases the risk of unintentional firing, increases the risk of children accessing guns.”
She added: “As far as a physics teacher, the lunch lady, or a librarian packing heat, that creates a lot more danger than it would prevent.”
But Bailey did not cite one incident in which a teacher’s gun has been accessed by a student, much less used for ill purposes. In other words, even though school districts in Colorado, Ohio, Utah, South Dakota, Texas, and elsewhere allow teachers to be armed for self-defense, not one incident could be cited of a teacher’s gun being accessed by students. Instead, Bailey spoke in what-if scenarios.
We can say with certainty what happens when teachers are not armed. Consider the December 14, 2012, Sandy Hook Elementary School attack (26 killed) or the February 14, 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas attack (17 killed). In both attacks, teachers were not allowed to be armed in order to shoot back, and in both attacks, teachers were killed along with students.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.