Editor’s note: This commentary is by Paul Manganiello, MD MPH, of Norwich, a emeritus professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth who is president of the GunSense Vermont Education Fund.
[O]n Wednesday, April 11, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, a gun-owning Republican, took a politically courageous stand to sign three legislative bills, which will reduce gun violence. Not every proposal to address gun violence has been well thought out, oftentimes ignoring evidence to the contrary. With the recent school shootings, the idea of arming teachers is again being proposed by the National Rifle Association. On March 26, our local newspaper ran a Washington Post editorial by David Thweatt, titled “I’m a Superintendent, My School District Decided to Arm Teachers.” Mr. Thweatt supervises the Harrold Independent School District in Harrold, Texas.
Gun violence in American, is a public health crisis, with more than 30,000 Americans losing their lives annually, but it goes beyond those raw numbers. In 2015, more than 85,000 Americans suffered non-fatal gunshot injuries; countless family, friends and community members suffer chronic emotional trauma as a result of gun violence. The cause of gun violence is multifactorial, and doesn’t lend itself to simple solutions. The public health approach to the problem, with systematic data collection, has four components: first, surveillance, what is the problem; second, what are the causes; third, what interventions work; and fourth, implementation and continuous evaluation of policies and programs.
Mr. Thweatt was writing in response to the recent Parkland, Florida, school shooting, as well as our subsequent school shootings. His school district is located in a rural area near the Texas-Oklahoma border. In 2006 following the Pennsylvania Nickel Mines school shooting, the district decided to allow certain faculty and staff to conceal carry firearms. The identity of these “Guardians” is confidential and they are paid a yearly stipend.
It appears however that Mr. Thweatt, and the district are working in a data free zone. They make many assumptions, but it is unclear what evidence Mr. Thweatt and the district looked at to arrive at the decision to arm their teachers. There is not a school-shooting situation, that I am aware of, whereby an armed teacher was shown to be an effective deterrent. The Florida and Maryland school shootings have had mixed reviews with their onsite armed resource officers. In the Florida incident, the officers failed to engage the assailant, while in the more recent Maryland shooting, the assailant was injured by the armed monitor, but as what often happens with school shooting, he took his own life. A Washington Post analysis found that gun violence has occurred in at least 68 schools that employ a police officer or security guard. In all but a few of those incidents, the shootings ended before law enforcement of any kind interceded.
Mr. Thweatt and the district made some assumptions before making the decision to arm their teachers. The first, they assumed that assailants are acting rationally and that the knowledge that someone in the school will be armed will be an adequate deterrent. It didn’t apply to the two school examples we are discussing. Both assailants knew the school had armed monitors. In the Parkland case, the assailant actually started his rampage on the school grounds before he even entered the building.
He also assumes that the level of competence for armed teachers is going to be consistent and hopefully superior to professional law enforcement officers. How will they maintain their competence? Have they been trained to use a revolver or a semiautomatic handgun? Will they all be able to respond under pressure in a real event? We know that even professional police officers have inadvertently discharged their firearm improperly, and in the “heat of battle” injured innocent bystanders. It is hard to imagine that a teacher with a handgun, no matter how well trained, will be able to stand up against an assailant with an AR-15. Mr. Thweatt should be required to back up his assertions with some data. The gun violence experience here in the States is abysmal when compared with other developed countries. No one can argue that there are too many guns circulating in this country, and that is a contributing factor to this country’s current level of violence.
Are there policies, which can be implemented, with evidence to back them up? Simply stated, yes. Since mass shootings (more than four individuals killed or injured, not including the shooter) are less common than the carnage that takes place daily, mass shootings don’t contribute greatly to the absolute annual number of gun fatalities and injuries. Reinstating a stronger version of the 1994 “assault weapons ban” and decreasing the size of the magazine on “military assault weapons” would decrease the number of deaths and injuries in mass shooting incidents. Raising the age to 21 in order to purchase any firearm, along with instituting Child Access Protection laws to assure safe storage of firearms, will reduce children and adolescents obtaining access to firearms. These laws would not only impact mass shootings, but also suicides, and unintentional deaths and injuries. We also need to do the best that we are able, to keep firearms out of the hands of individuals who are a danger to either themselves or others, tightening up out federal and state background checks system, and instituting a longer waiting period before purchasing a weapon would help.
We need to push back against the NRA’s assertions that the only reason individual citizens wish to pass sensible gun safety legislation is to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens. Both the federal and state constitutions assure their citizens the right to “bear arms” for protection and sport. So let’s move on. We need to also push back on the NRA’s delusional contention that an individual’s ability to possess firearms is necessary to protect oneself against a tyrannical state. The best way to assure against a state gone amok is the ballot box, not staring down the barrel of some gun.
As a taxpayer, I will need more evidence in order to support funding to arm teaches. Arming teachers has a significant chance of realizing some horrible unintended consequences. We need sensible gun legislation, I would hope sensible gun owners and individuals who chose not to possess a firearm can come together and reduce firearm violence in our society.
