It seems that everyone already has a pretty good sense of what could go wrong with Donald Trump’s “plan” to arm teachers. Having collected the thousands of stories that became the GunFAIL series, I know that most of those things already have happened. I’m able to recall off the top of my head the Utah elementary school teacher who injured herself in an accidental discharge while in the restroom, shattering the toilet in the process. And the professor at Idaho State who accidentally shot himself in the foot during his lecture. Or the Pennsylvania teacher who left her loaded weapon behind in the bathroom, where it was found by students.
Prefer armed guards or school resource officers, instead? They haven’t been doing much better. For instance, sometimes they leave their guns behind in the bathroom, too. Somehow their “special training” hasn’t convinced them, for instance, not to clean their weapons while on duty. And of course, who could forget the time the outsourced, private security guard hired by the University of Florida accidentally shot a student?
The truth is, of course, we have forgotten that, if we even heard about it in the first place. Which is highly unlikely, because we still treat gun accidents like local curiosities in this country, barely noticing even when toddlers routinely shoot themselves dead with loose guns found in mom’s purse, in bedside tables, or on top of kitchen counters that they “can’t reach.” Even the above-linked NBC story describing Trump’s proposal to arm teachers as “colossally stupid” cites the example of Utah’s trained teachers, with no mention of the fact that they’d actually already had a teacher accidentally shoot herself on the job.
So we know what can go wrong, because we’ve seen it go wrong. And a lot of smart people have even correctly guessed that arming teachers will create enormous liability issues for the schools, the school systems, the teachers, and everybody associated with administering it.
But there’s another aspect of the Utah teacher story that is probably more predictive than a collection of GunFAIL anecdotes. Even the most hardcore boosters of the proposal still feel compelled to sell it to doubters by pointing out that participating teachers will be specially trained, and required to adhere to strict safety protocols at all times. But I’m here to tell you that those safety measures aren’t worth much in practice.
Utah has had its armed teachers legislation in place since 2003, the idea having been proposed in reaction to the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Westbrook Elementary, in Taylorsville, the school where the Utah incident took place, is part of the Granite school district in central Salt Lake County, which implemented the law (and dealt with the worrisome liability issues) this way:
The policy put in place by the 70,000-student Granite district as the new law went into effect in June defines the lawful carrying or use of a weapon as "outside the scope of employment" of district personnel, suggesting that the district will not accept liability for any gun-related mishap.
It also prohibits employees from revealing to anyone in the school that they have a weapon, and from using district property for storing it.
That bears repeating. District policy prohibits employees from revealing to anyone in the school that they have a weapon.
But what are the consequences of violating this policy? None that we know of. Because even before Michelle Ferguson-Montgomery accidentally shot herself on school grounds in September 2014, every kid in her class knew she was armed:
Sixth-grader Derek Atkinson is in Ferguson-Montgomery's class and said he knew she carried a gun because he saw it on her hip when she bent over in the classroom. The teacher's nickname is "Iron Woman."
It’s not just district policy, either:
Utah state law allows teachers to carry concealed weapons in classrooms as long as the weapons are not visible and the teacher doesn't announce that he or she is carrying.
Now, Ferguson-Montgomery is no longer teaching. At least not in the Granite school district. She resigned from her job once misdemeanor charges were filed in connection with the shooting incident. And although she was found to be in violation of an unspecified district policy, she had apparently been cleared by school authorities to return to the classroom.
You’d hope that Ferguson-Montgomery wasn’t cleared to continue carrying her weapon in the classroom, but the reporting doesn’t actually provide any clarity on that subject, which is pretty amazing all by itself. But even without knowing that, it’s fairly significant that both state law and school district policy required that her gun be kept concealed at all times, and that its presence not be revealed to anyone in the school, and yet her violation of that policy went unremarked upon.
Until she accidentally fired that gun on school property, blowing up a toilet and injuring herself in the process.
And initially attempting to mislead the police about how the accident occurred.
Ferguson-Montgomery, according to the documents, told the detective the pistol fell from her hip holster while she was in the stall and accidentally discharged. The documents say that version was inconsistent with what investigators found.
"At a second interview, the detective confronted her with these inconsistencies," Randy Porter, a detective with the Granite School District Police, wrote in an affidavit with the charging documents. "The defendant then reported that after entering the stall, she removed the firearm from the holster and placed it on top of the toilet-paper dispenser."
Porter's affidavit says Ferguson-Montgomery told him she used the restroom, grabbed the gun with her right hand intending to place the gun in her holster, but the gun slipped.
"The defendant stated that she did not remember pulling the trigger," Porter wrote, "but conceded that is what likely happened."
So when proponents of arming the teachers try to convince you that they’ve taken your safety concerns to heart, don’t buy it. The Utah results tell us a much more likely story about how the rules will be enforced in practice.
Think about it from the perspective of a supporter of the measure. If you favor allowing teachers to carry in the classroom as a matter of safety for the students, are you really going to be willing to jeopardize that safety by ordering the weapon removed from the classroom because of a few silly technical violations? Probably not.
But one thing tracking the GunFAIL stories has taught me about gun rights advocates is that when they need to sell the “safety” of firearms to doubters, they do so by insisting on their strict dedication to observance of all safety protocols at all times. “There’s no such thing as a gun accident,” goes the familiar refrain. “Only gun negligence.” If you follow the rules of gun safety at all times, a firearm poses no threat to anyone.
And if you don’t follow those rules at all times? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If I had to speculate on how the question will eventually play itself out, I would guess that the first school employee to lose their right to carry a weapon on campus will sue, claiming that the relevant law or policy is an unconstitutional infringement on his or her Second Amendment rights. And that the very same people who tried to mollify doubters of the armed teachers policy by playing up the training requirements and safety protocols will instead by filing amicus briefs in support of that claim.
In other words, once the NRA and other boosters of the armed teachers policy succeed in shoehorning guns into the classroom, the need for concessions on “safety requirements” falls away. They wanted the guns. And as far as they’re concerned, they’re perfectly happy with “constitutional carry” for teachers or anyone else. (Perhaps paradoxically, they’re OK with completely unregulated carry because, well, they think guns don’t pose a threat to anyone, so long as the safety rules are… Hey, wait a minute!) They only included the additional training and safety requirements as a sop to the rest of us, to get us to buy into the passage of the legislation that let them get their foot gun in the door.