Will having armed teachers prevent mass shooting in schools?  That’s a question pretty much everyone is answering “no” to and that’s plenty reasonable. Though, it helps support your case by looking at statistics of past mass shootings where people, other than the shooter, were armed.

There have been many mass shootings in the U.S in all kinds of different places. Military bases are surprisingly a bit of a common place for shootings. On September 16^th, 2013, the Washington Navy Yard Shooting occurred. Twelve people were killed and around eight were injured during this shooting, a shooting at a military base. There were armed security guards around of course, military bases are normally very tight places. The shooter, Aaron Alexis, killed one of those armed security guards and stole his gun. Alexis was shot at by another security guard but he managed to get away without any injury. Using the gun he stole, he managed to injure and kill another couple of people after his ran out of ammo. He was eventually shot dead by police officers, even injuring some of them. So, this was a case where people were armed, but they were unable to do anything and to stop the shooter before police could.

Another case of a mass shooting involving someone who was armed, aside from the shooter, was on November 5^th, 2009. This shooting was at Fort Hood which is near a town in Texas. The shooter, Nidal Hasan shot and killed thirteen people, and injured more than thirty others. He shot at unarmed soldiers, yet there were police at the base, of course there were. One of the base police attempted to shoot him, but he ended up injuring her and kicking the gun away from her. He was eventually shot down by another base policeman. At a place such as a military base, there are always people who are armed, they can’t always be there right away. They also aren’t guaranteed to hit their target, even people who have been trained with guns for years often miss their targets.

If someone is armed at a scene like this, it doesn’t mean they can always do something. There’s no guarantee they’ll hit their target. There’s also no guarantee that they won’t be too scared to do something, they’re people too. Having teachers carry guns just isn’t the best idea, no matter how much a teacher cares for their students. The teacher could go through all kinds of training, be as prepared as possible, and when something happens not be able to do anything. You look at incidents where people are armed and can’t or don’t do anything, it could be just the same with teachers. There’s all kinds of problems with this whole idea, this is only one of them. Say a shooting does happen, and some teachers have guns, but they fail to do anything. The whole shooting is going to be blamed on them and they’ll probably end up getting fired. A teacher’s job is to protect their students, yes, but a teacher’s job is not chasing after a madman with a gun. Overall, if teachers do start carrying guns around, there is no guarantee that this will prevent mass school shootings. So to answer the beginning question, it’s very unlikely that teachers carrying around guns will prevent anything.

Sources:

Interactive Inc., CBS. The Washington Navy Yard Shooting, as It Happened. 31 Oct. 2013, 1:13 PM, www.cbsnews.com/news/the-washington-navy-yard-shooting-as-it-happened/.

SCHMIDT, MICHAEL D. SHEAR;MICHAEL S. “Gunman and 12 Victims Killed in Shooting at D.C. Navy Yard.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 16 Sept. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/09/17/us/shooting-reported-at-washington-navy-yard.html?pagewanted=all.