We’re now nearly two weeks into a remarkable national policy conversation on whether we should arm our schoolteachers. Not all of them, the administration says. But some. “I never said ‘give teachers guns’ like was stated on Fake News @CNN & @NBC,” President Trump tweeted last week. “What I said was to look at the possibility of giving ‘concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience – only the best.” He repeated this clarification Monday morning. “The headline was Trump wants all teachers to have guns,” he said, addressing a meeting of governors at the White House. “Trump wants teachers to have guns. I don’t want teachers to have guns. I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball or hitting a golf ball or putting.”
Now, consider this for a minute. If it’s the case that only “highly trained people that have a natural talent” can be trusted to thwart shooters, why should anyone else be armed? Is it delusional for families to keep a rifle in the home in the belief that they, with unremarkable skill, would be able to stop a home invasion? Why should we believe that the average concealed carrier—trained somewhat, perhaps, but not a natural marksman—is competent enough to stop an armed criminal? Why should we believe, moreover, that a populace of armed Average Joes would be able to take on the hypercompetent, almost comically well-armed forces of an American government gone rogue?
The conservative case for gun ownership has rested on the idea that ordinary people, with a bit of training and resolve, can use guns to great effect. The National Rifle Association has thus backed loose gun-carry laws that allow average citizens to carry concealed weapons almost anywhere. Heroism, they’ve argued, is within the capacity of anyone with a gun. So why shouldn’t the same be true of teachers? Let them bring their handguns to class and they’ll presumably be just as effective with them as they would be getting free of muggings or in any other situations.
The more guns the merrier. Or so we’ve been told. Of course, it’s also possible—as the president seems to believe—that the benefits of gun ownership have been overstated.
