I Cant' Bear Arms

 What's round on the ends and deadly in the middle? 

Ohio. Or it could become more deadly if their state legislature has its way. Around the time that the state's schools had been on summer break for a month, Governor Mike DeWine signed House Bill 99 which made it easier to arm school employees. Until oh-so-very-recently, only those who had completed seven hundred hours of training could carry firearms with the approval of their school board. This new legislation walks that back to just twenty-four hours, leaving the discretion to local school boards. Allen County Sheriff Matthew Treglia had this to say about the possibility of encountering others with guns during an active shooter event, "This is obviously going to change the way we respond to active shooter situations if we know there's armed teachers in the school. And more than likely my guys aren't going to know who the teacher is."

Go ahead and pile this potential confusion on top of the fact that the current generation of school shooters have grown up in a system that has provided them a background in school procedures for emergency lockdowns. Would these teachers, with all twenty-four hours of training under their gun belts, be asked to leave their students when the bad guys are outside? And if they did, what would happen if that teacher accidentally shot a student or another faculty member on accident? Would they be shielded from prosecution? 

And what happens if a student gets ahold of the teacher's gun?

And how is it that we continue to believe that the solution to gun problems is simply to add more guns to the situation? As am educator, I still cannot believe that after being taught that the first step in getting students to learn is to make them feel safe. Strapping a gun to your hip is antithetical to that first step. Somewhere in the halls of the Ohio Statehouse, this thought probably didn't occur to the legislators who came up with this nonsense in the first place. The good news is that it leaves the decision up to the local school boards, most of whom are currently giving the new law a polite, "no thank you." 

And yet, here we are, just about a month away from heading back to classrooms where all we really want to do is teach and learn. And make it out alive to recess.