Of all the proposals made concerning school safety, arming teachers appears to be most controversial.
The issue of gun control continues to be talked about in Washington D.C. and around the country. President Trump, meeting with the nation's governors today on a variety of topics, including gun control. The president, promising to take action on guns, even if the members of Congress won't, and revealing he met over the weekend with NRA leaders to talk about legislative actions. The NRA, rejecting the president's idea to raise the legal age for buying guns, but they are backing his plan to arm teachers.
A CBS news poll over the weekend says that 50% of the people they surveyed don't want to see teachers armed, while 45% were in favor of the idea. We hit the streets to get the thoughts of local residents.
"Personally I don't think arming teachers in the school is a good idea. One, you have teachers that are already focusing on trying to teach the children, so now you're putting them in a stressful situation, they're not professionals like police officers and not trained to do that. Also you have a lot of students sometimes can get unruly in the classroom and you have a lot of teachers that might hit that stress limit, what's to stop them from taking that same gun and pulling it on a student?" said one woman.
Another resident says, " I think when you take a job as a teacher, you want to be an educator, you're not a security guard. However, some of them I think with the proper training would use them if they needed to, so they should be allowed to carry them as long as they're safely stored in the classroom, not obviously laying out, things like that."
"Well if they want to be armed, I think they should. They shouldn't be forced into it, but if it's something they like to do, they're already on the scene, and law enforcement, most of the time, it's over with by the time they get there. It's not their fault. They have to be called, they have to get there, the teacher is already there," commented one man.
"These teachers are not going to be practicing everyday, they are very inexperienced, they're scared. They know that these children's lives are at risk. You think they can really turn around and really defend themselves and these children against a shooter? It's not a good idea. And this thing about good guns out shooting the bad guns? That is total nonsense," said another resident.
The CBS news poll also stated 87% of Americans want the country to increase mental health screenings and 75% support background checks, and of all of the ideas presented in the survey, which included banning bump stocks and AR-15s, arming teachers was the least popular of the ideas.
