One of the most controversial responses to the spate of deadly school shootings in the U.S. has been the idea of arming teachers. The idea has become a reality in some 13 states.
A new 30-minute documentary, “G is for Gun: The Arming of Teachers in America,” takes a look at Sidney, Ohio. In 2013, the school district there became one of the first in the country to begin arming teachers and administrators.
The documentary is co-produced by two western Massachusetts filmmakers, including Kate Way, a longtime educator.
Way told NEPR’s Kari Njiiri that officials in Sidney, Ohio, acted after the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 children and six educators were killed.
Kate Way: Every single person we spoke to cited Sandy Hook as a turning point in both directions. We spoke to many people who were catalyzed by Sandy Hook to become politically active around this issue of guns, in one direction or another, in a way that they hadn't been before Sandy Hook.
Audio clip from the documentary "G is for Gun":
I'm just not willing to let somebody come in and do something horrible to these kids without trying to do something about it. We have people that just want to sit back and let the government do everything, and the government can't. Well, I'm not one to wait on somebody else to do it. I'm going to do it myself.
Kari Njiiri, NEPR: That was one teacher who decided to undergo the training. How prevalent was his perspective?
His perspective was surprisingly prevalent, I think. It was funny, because we started with the assumption that we would try really hard to talk to the people to actually talk to us about their desire to do this, or their opinion that this was the right thing to do. What we found was actually the exact opposite. It was much harder in this area of Ohio, where there was such a strong gun culture, to get people to talk to us, particularly on camera, about their opposition to this.
Video clip from the documentary "G is for Gun":
But you did manage. You spoke to one teacher who talked about the demands placed on teachers in general.
Audio clip:
My day is greeting my kids at the door, and then checking everybody in, with lunches and homework. And then you've got somebody who has to use the restroom, and then I have to put my seizure medication backpack on, to make sure I have that with me all the time for the student, and we go through our whole morning routine, and there's title teachers coming in and out, and speech coming in and out, and OT, and PT, and aides. Then we move on with more reading and my classroom. And that's before lunch. And then to throw in: by the way, you're a security officer now, and here's your safe.
You say that this was sort of a minority position in the town? Or was it harder to find people who agreed with that?
I think it was harder to find people who are willing to speak about their opposition to this plan. We had a number of people tell us off-camera that they were opposed to this, but that they weren't comfortable saying that on-camera. And that was true both in terms of people who worked inside the schools, and in the larger community.
You'll notice that we don't actually have any parent interviews from the community, which you would think that would be an obvious place to go. And it was because we really could not find people who were willing to speak on-camera about that.
The gun association that was sponsoring this firearms training -- they were willing to speak on-camera about what they were doing. And you got into a couple of the classes.
We did. They actually gave us sort of remarkable access to their program, and we were able to visit three or four of their trainings, actually.
Audio clip:
Somebody pulls out a gun and start shooting. How long does it take somebody to pick up the phone and call 911? We don't know. The guess is about five minutes. To the people who are under the gun, you are the most important person in the world.
This is the Buckeye Firearms Association, which is pro-gun advocacy lobbying group that's really pretty effective at what they do. I mean, they've actually been responsible, I think, for getting a lot of pro-gun legislation passed in Ohio. They are now offering this three-day training specifically targeted at school personnel.
You also spoke to law enforcement who did not, by and large, support arming teachers, because it presents a dilemma for them, as well.
Audio clip:
Anytime there's going to be a shooting incident, I will have 14 officers there within two minutes' time, and the first officer within seconds. Now we're walking into the building with people we don't know that are going to be armed. And now not only do I have one or two possible shooters -- now I have four, five, six, seven other guns in that building that I have to be concerned about. The chance that we could meet each other in a hallway -- you have split seconds to do that reactionary time, and identify threat/no threat.
I'm thinking of that phrase: the only deterrent to a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. How do you discern who the good guy is, and who the bad guy is? It's not like one is wearing a black hat, and there's some menacing music behind it.
Yeah, that's right. And in the case of Sydney, it was especially problematic, because there was this sort of -- from what we were able to gather -- a really long-standing divide between the public school officials and the local police department.
Not only was there opposition to the plan on the part of the police, but there just hadn't been any communication, so that the police department didn't really know what the school's plan looked like, even on paper, or how many staff were armed, or which staff were armed.
You and your co-filmmaker Julie Akeret are western Massachusetts residents. Do you see any possibility that the political climate here will lead to armed teachers in schools?
I don't. I don't see that this would ever happen in Massachusetts, although I was surprised to learn in my research that school boards are empowered to vote on this in Massachusetts, which is not the case in all state law.
However, I think that there are a host of other school security measures that are being enacted -- maybe not quite as disturbing and shocking and unusual as arming teachers -- but are also problematic, and worth considering, in and of themselves. Everything from lockdown drills, to metal detectors, to -- police in schools is a hugely contested area, right? We know that that's become a high-profile issue.
In fact, our film ends with the Sandy Hook Advisory Commissioner Scott Jackson saying we don't mind a gun in the school, as long as it's attached to a person wearing a badge.
And that makes me want to make a sequel, because, you know, a gun attached to a person wearing a badge, as we know, is a really complicated topic, and it becomes even more complicated in a school environment.
“G is for Gun: The Arming of Teachers in America” airs Thursday on WGBY. The film is scheduled to be broadcast nationally in September on the PBS World channel.
