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Arming teachers in schools is a great idea, President Trump, and because I'm looking forward to it I've worked out all the practicalities for you

A teacher who is trained to be a good shot should have no problem whatsoever sensing the presence of an active shooter while in the middle of teaching a lesson on photosynthesis, unlocking the closet where the pistol is kept, getting off a clean shot, and taking out a shooter armed with an assault weapon

Molly McCaffrey
Thursday 22 February 2018 11:12 GMT
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Donald Trump says he is considering arming teachers after shooting tragedy

This week the President of the United States proposed that we arm American teachers to keep our schools safe. Forgive me if I’m a tad bit slow, but I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out how this whole “arming teachers” thing is going to work, so I want to try to figure out exactly how it might play out. You know, just so we are all on the same page.

First, we are going to have to find teachers who are willing to be armed and trained as marksmen. That should be easy to do given how well we pay teachers and how much respect we show them in our society.

Then, from the vast number of teachers who are sure to volunteer for this rewarding job, we are going to select the teachers we think are most capable of handling a gun and cross our fingers and hope that we chose right and that none of the people we choose ever loses his/her temper and uses the gun we give them to hurt a student.

And we're also going to hope and pray that they don't ever incorrectly identify a student who isn't a threat as a threat and accidentally shoot him or her (as we have seen the highly trained police officers in our country do on far too many occasions).

And then we are going to ask these teachers to put in extra time to be trained. I guess that means we'll have to either pay them to work extra hours over the summer or pay a substitute to cover their classes so they can go to training during the school year. And obviously we can use all of the extra money in our school budgets to pay for this.

And then we're going to ask these teachers to be proficient marksmen while also asking them to still be great teachers. I'm sure it won't be hard for them to concentrate on teaching reading and fractions and history while also being prepared to spring into action with a gun on a moment's notice.

Then, after they are trained, we are going to give these specially chosen and carefully trained teachers guns, and those guns will be kept… where? In their classroom closets? In their desk drawers? In their briefcases?

So these guns will be in a closet/drawer/briefcase which will obviously have to be kept locked so that students can't steal the gun and use it themselves. Because really, the most ideal situation for a school shooter would be to break in and access the gun they know is in their classroom rather than having to go through all the pesky admin of buying one themselves.

That obviously also means that, in a situation which requires it, the teacher will have to unlock the closet/drawer/briefcase and remove the gun before they themselves are shot by an active shooter.

And we're going to give these teachers what kind of guns? Pistols? That should work, since most active shooters enter schools with at least one assault weapon. (An AR-15 has been the assault weapon of choice for school shooters lately.) Or are we going to give teachers assault weapons too because, you know, an eye for an eye? No, no, we can't do that. That's a bridge too far. So we'll just give teachers pistols.

A teacher who is trained to be a good shot should have no problem whatsoever sensing the presence of an active shooter while in the middle of teaching a lesson on photosynthesis, unlocking the closet/drawer/briefcase where the pistol is kept, calmly pulling the pistol out, getting off a clean shot, and taking out the active shooter before he sprays bullets across the classroom with an assault weapon. No problem whatsoever.

Well, now I’ve thought it through I feel pretty reassured by the sensible solutions of Donald Trump. Thanks, Mr President. I’m really glad we cleared that up.

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