5.28.22
In response to the latest mass school shooting in the US in which a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Republican politicians have fended off calls for gun control with proposals such as arming teachers and increasing police presence and security at schools. But many American teachers have heavily criticized these proposals as solutions that wouldn’t work and as distractions from actual solutions that conflict with the interests of gun lobbyists and manufacturers, who significantly fund and support Republicans. “If they cared at all, something would have been done. It would have been done after Columbine,” said Jim Gard, a high school math teacher in Broward county, Florida, who survived the 2018 Parkland school shooting. “Until they start caring more about people’s lives than worrying about their donations and their own careers and their own power, this will never end. They’ll have another one, next week, next month, whatever it is – this is going to continue, and it’ll never stop until they decide to put an end to it.” Many teachers doubt the Republican proposals would work.
A 2019 survey of more than 2,900 teachers around the US conducted by a researcher at California State University, Northridge, found 95.3% believed teachers should not be carrying guns in the classroom. “I went to college to become a teacher, not a law enforcement officer,” said Jourden Armstrong, a teacher for 15 years in Michigan. “Commonsense gun reform is an absolutely necessary component to curbing this uniquely American problem.” She also argued teachers would leave the profession in droves if these policy proposals were enacted. The National Education Association, the largest labor union in the US representing about 3 million members, criticized the proposal of arming teachers as a solution to mass shootings in schools. In a 2021 report conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Texas ranked 40th out of 50 states and Washington DC in public education funding, spending $11,987 for each student annually, more than $3,000 less than the national average of $15,114.