South Dakota Allows Teachers to Carry Guns

Quicker on the draw means more security? A new law in South Dakota makes it the first state to give blanket permission for teachers to carry guns in the classroom, adopting a gun lobby suggestion.

Shooting is tradition in South Dakota. Hardly any other state is more intimately connected with hunting than this sparsely populated stretch of land near the Canadian border. Those growing up here are likely to have a gun before a driver’s license: BB guns at age eight, skeet shooting at age twelve and marksmanship contests using .22 caliber semi-automatics not long after that. Guns are a part of everyday life in South Dakota.

Now the Republican-controlled state government has made South Dakota the first state to give blanket permission for teachers to carry guns in the classroom. The justification: Armed teachers will prevent slaughters like the one at Sandy Hook Elementary School late last year. The theory is that in case of a school shooting threat, teachers would be quicker on the trigger than a gunman on a rampage. A law permitting teachers to carry was passed on Friday.

Armed teachers are already permitted in several areas of Texas and Ohio, but South Dakota is the first state to pass a blanket permission law. According to the law, those allowed to have guns in the classroom include teachers, principals, school maintenance, and other personnel, such as privately engaged security guards, including volunteers. All must receive the same weapons training as other law enforcement personnel.

Arming for Security

The BBC reports that school boards, teachers and other school officials have expressed opposition to laws arming school personnel, arguing that doing so would make schools more dangerous.

In rural school districts, law enforcement officials are often far away and police require a response time of 30 to 45 minutes. A spokesman for Governor Dennis Duagaard said that people might want to opt for hiring armed guards to protect their schools.

While many U.S. citizens would like President Obama to institute stricter gun controls and a ban on assault rifles, the American gun lobby has been pushing for armed guards in schools.

The National Rifle Association’s Wayne Lapierre maintains, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The one thing the pro-gun group around Lapierre all agree on is that more guns mean more security. When the gun enthusiasts finally reacted to the shooting spree in Newtown, Conn., they couldn’t come up with any solutions beyond calling for more privately owned firepower in schools to prevent anyone else from committing senseless murders there. Lapierre called for armed guards in schools as the best way to protect children.

When Armed Guards Become Security Risks Themselves

Are guns good or bad? It doesn’t appear to be that simple, as shown by several examples at schools that already have armed guards on campus.

At one east Texas school where hiring armed guards is currently being considered, a worker accidentally shot and wounded himself during a training workshop on gun safety. In New York, a police officer was suspended from his duties patrolling a school when he accidentally fired off a round in the hallway while classes were in session.

That South Dakota, of all places, should enact such a law is absurd: South Dakota has never had a single incident where a gunman went on a rampage in a school and injured someone. The lone case in which a student was the victim of a school shooting incident occurred on Jan. 4, 1961, when 14-year-old Donald Kurtz was killed with a shot from a .22 caliber rifle. It was being used for sound effects in a school play, but the results were nonetheless fatal.