AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

Anti-gun zealots continue to trip over themselves to illustrate how unsafe arming teachers is. Fortunately, disputing their so-called studies hasn’t been exactly difficult.

Poking holes in studies is one thing, but creating a study to look at the real concerns is quite another, and that’s where John Lott comes in.

Lott specializes in conducting studies to look at real problems. He took a look at the issue of armed teachers since we have several states that have allowed teachers to be armed, and found the fears to be unfounded.

John Lott’s latest study refutes claims by anti-gunners that the presence of firearms on school campuses increases the chances of gun violence. President of his Crime Prevention Research Center, Lott’s study answered two questions raised by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Giffords Law Center and others: 1) Does letting teachers carry a firearm on campus and in the classroom increase the chances of gun violence?; and 2) Does the presence of those teachers carrying legally deter mass shooters?

The study, released last month, found: “We don’t need to guess how the policy would work. There has yet to be a single case of someone being wounded or killed from a shooting, let alone a mass public shooting, between 6 AM and midnight at a school that lets teachers carry guns” since at least January 2000. Fears that a student might grab a firearm from a teacher and use it to commit gun violence are groundless as well, said Lott’s study: “Students obtaining teachers guns have not occurred at all.” Appropriately, Lott entitled his study: “Schools that Allow Teachers to Carry Guns are Extremely Safe.”

On the other hand, shootings on campuses where teachers and staff are prohibited from carrying concealed have “increased significantly — doubling [in number] between 2001 and 2008 versus 2009 and 2018.”

…

In his study Lott collected the data on all K-12 shootings that took place on school campuses between the hours of 6 a.m. and midnight on school days. He found 306 cases. But 48 of them were suicides so that left 188 shootings. In those instances, 193 people died and 267 were either wounded or injured. But none of them occurred on any of the more than 1,000 school properties where teachers and staff were permitted to carry a sidearm. In fact, the only shooting that took place on a campus where teachers were allowed to carry occurred after hours, and no one was injured.

And let’s be honest, 6 a.m. to midnight encompasses a lot of hours when no one is on campus anyway. It was a broad time period within the day, and yet even then he found almost nothing.

Funny, huh?

The truth of the matter is that while anti-gunners are fearful of armed teachers, they’re often fearful of anyone who has a gun in their possession regardless of circumstance. Yes, I’d argue that includes police officers to some degree.

Right now, the idea of armed teachers terrifies anti-gunners because they can’t imagine someone with a gun not flipping out and killing everyone. Considering the violent rhetoric I’ve seen out of some anti-gun advocates, I’m inclined to think a fair bit of this is projection.

Regardless, it appears that while schools can be violent places, arguments that guns will somehow turn the sainted teachers into homicidal maniacs is completely unfounded.

More guns. Less Crime.

As per usual.