North Carolina Republicans may not have been able to enact a permitless carry bill this year, but they were able to override Gov. Josh Stein's veto of a bill allowing licensed concealed carry holders to bear arms on private school property so long as they have written permission from school officials. Now one gun control activist in the state is taking aim at the common sense measure with one of the dumbest arguments I've run across in my 21 years of covering Second Amendment issues.
Sue Duncan is a former teacher and a current activist with Moms Demand Action. Speaking to WECT in Raleigh about the new law, Duncan cited a number of reasons for her opposition.... each one more ludicrous than the last.
“I would not allow my child to go to a school where volunteers are carrying guns,” Duncan said.
Duncan said school fights are concerning enough without adding firearms to the situation.
“If you had people, teachers, coming out of classrooms with guns, people would’ve been seriously hurt,” she said.
Armed staff aren't going to whip out their gun to break up a fistfight in the hallways. Any school that allows for armed staff is going to do so for one primary reason: to have a first line of defense in case of a targeted attack on the school, its students, and staff. There are thousands of educators in hundreds of school districts across the country who are already carrying on a daily basis, and I've yet to run across a story about an armed staffer drawing down on students who are scuffling in the classroom or by their lockers.
Duncan says volunteers with guns could also add an extra layer of confusion in a potentially serious situation.
“If there is a serious situation where you have other police coming into the building who may not know the teachers, they’re not going to recognize whether that person is supposed to have a gun or not. So that person, that teacher, can be inadvertently hurt,” said Duncan.
If, God forbid, police do respond to an active shooting at a school where armed staff are present, school officials can alert law enforcement to the staff members who are allowed to lawfully carry on campus. In fact, there's nothing preventing these schools from proactively working with local law enforcement on how to respond to an active shooting threat. Again, this is something that hundreds of school districts around the country have contemplated, and the private schools in North Carolina that decide to adopt a policy allowing for some armed staff can look to states like Texas, Colorado, and Ohio for real-world advice on how best to implement that school security strategy.
And the consequences of seeing a teacher pull out a gun, Duncan says, could create a negative effect.
“Seeing a teacher run to a gun safe and pull a gun out could really create an uncomfortable situation for children,” said Duncan.
I had to go back and re-read Duncan's quote just to make sure it was as idiotic as I thought it was.
Ponder this scenario for a moment: a teacher hears the loud crack of gunfire coming from the hallway outside her classroom. Boom. Boom. Boom. She runs over to the door to lock it, then darts back to the safe behind her desk to pull out a handgun (or, more likely, she draws the pistol from the holster she's wearing).
Students would undoubtably be "uncomfortable" in that situation; not because their teacher pulled out a gun, but because someone in the hallway outside their classroom is firing shots. Again, armed staff are there to serve as a first line of defense in case of an active assailant on campus. If a teacher is forced to draw her firearm in front of students, I guarantee those kids are going to be more stressed and freaked out by what led to their teacher pulling a gun than her grabbing a handgun to protect them.
Does Duncan honestly think students would be cool and calm in that same situation, so long as their teacher didn't have a gun to defend the classroom? I have no idea what subjects she taught in her 32 years as an educator, but I'm guessing/hoping that critical thinking skills weren't involved.
Duncan told WECT that she prefers school resource officers to armed teachers, but that's not really an option for private schools... which is why the North Carolina legislature passed this law in the first place. I'm all in favor SROs as well, but research from Purdue University's Homeland Security Institute suggests that the best way to defend against an active assailant attack on a school campus is to have both SROs and armed staff. The SRO can seek and engage the attacker while armed staff shelter in place with their students, ready to fire on the attacker if the door to their classroom is breached.
Again, SROs aren't an option for the vast majority of private schools, but allowing trained and vetted staff members to carry is doable. I don't know how many private schools in the state will take advantage of the new law, but I do know that Duncan hasn't presented any rational argument against it.
