President Trump spent Thursday morning doubling down on the notion that more guns, in teachers’ hands, is a better solution to gun violence than gun control. As a matter of common sense, Trump’s proposal makes no sense—not from a teacher’s or a statistician’s point of view, and especially not from a lawyer’s point of view.
Gina Caneva, an English teacher on Chicago’s South Side, published a rebuttal to Trump the same day.
[I]n the last few years, we've added district-mandated lockdown-drills in preparation for a school shooting. I am required to shut and lock my doors, turn off the lights and get the students in my library onto the floor and against an interior wall. Every time, I think about what I would do in an actual school shooting situation but quickly realize that, faced with an enraged teenager with a semiautomatic rifle, none of my scenarios for saving myself or my students would stand a chance. … And no, President Trump, having a gun would not make me feel any safer – just the opposite.
Caneva’s mainstream piece was backed by a flood of Twitter takes and analyses exploring the practical and legal problems with the proposal. More than a few pointed to statistics on accuracy rates when it comes to shooting.
From 1996 to 2006, NYPD officers hit their target just 34 percent of the time. As of 2008, LAPD’s accuracy rate was slightly worse.
In Los Angeles, which has 9,699 officers, the police fired 283 rounds in 2006, hitting their target 77 times, for a hit ratio of 27 percent, said Officer Ana Aguirre, a spokeswoman. [In 2007], they fired 264 rounds, hitting 76 times, for a 29 percent hit ratio, she said.
[In 2008] the hit ratio in Los Angeles is 31 percent, with 74 of 237 bullets fired by officers hitting the target.
So, teachers don’t necessarily want to be armed, and they’re not likely to be particularly effective when armed.
Brad Heath of USA Today takes that one step further: What does it mean to arm teachers without a framework for use of force in that setting?
Would we just treat teachers, who are less likely to be accurate and to lack relevant experience and training around the use of deadly force that officers get, the same way we treat officers?
If we understand public school teachers to be acting as representatives of the state in a law enforcement-like capacity, would they benefit from the same protections as police, i.e., qualified immunity?
Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine that protects public officials from suit in cases where the rights the plaintiff claims were violated were “not clearly established.” Heath offers a few disturbing examples of how that plays out when law enforcement officers engage—or just see—armed people.
Even more outrageous are the instances in which officers have shot someone who turned out to be unarmed and nonetheless been protected.
The rationale behind giving officers this kind of leeway is predicated on the recognition that police may frequently face dangerous situations and have limited time in which to make a decision about the use of force. The above are instances in which officers make the wrong choice despite training, despite experience, and despite presumably significantly greater familiarity with dangerous situations.
Even if teachers didn’t get qualified immunity and only had to prove reasonableness—well, courts have been pretty flexible on that, too.
Does anyone really want to put teachers in this position and students at this kind of risk?
