Education Week - March 1, 2017 - 11

guy with a gun is a good guy with
a gun," LaPierre said. "Would you
rather have your 911 call bring a
good guy with a gun from a mile
away ... or a minute away?"
A representative of the NRA did
not respond to requests for comment or provide the organization's
position on pending state gun bills.

Motivated by Sandy Hook
In the year following the Sandy
Hook shootings, state lawmakers filed hundreds of bills related
to school safety, responding to a
swell of public concern, an Education Week analysis found. Of those,
73 called for loosening or ending
the prohibition of guns on school
grounds. And in states where districts already had discretion to allow
teachers and staff to carry ﬁrearms,
some moved to change their policies.
That was the case for the Argyle,
Texas, district, which armed an undisclosed number of staff members
after the idea drew support at a
public meeting following the Newtown shootings, Superintendent
Telena Wright said. Parents were
concerned that the 2,500-student
district-located about 40 miles
north of Dallas-only has one onsite police officer and that local
police may not respond quickly
enough, she said.
Signs outside of Argyle's schools
warn visitors: "Please be aware that
the staff at Argyle ISD are armed
and may use whatever force is necessary to protect our students."

"It goes back to Sandy Hook, really," Wright said. "I think that was
kind of the pivotal point of it all. I
know so many schools in Texas and
I know many schools throughout the
nation reviewed their safety and security policy after that."
Citing security concerns, Wright
won't disclose how many staff are
armed or how many are teachers.
That information is not accessible to
parents, either, though Wright said
she has not received any complaints.
Armed staff were ﬁrst recommended
by district leaders, passed a psychological screening, and received district-provided training, she said. The
district has never had any problems
with its policy, and participating
staff have never drawn their weapons in its schools, Wright said.
Many proponents of loosening gun
restrictions in schools cite security
concerns in rural areas, where police
may have slower response times.
And many state bills wouldn't require additional training beyond
what's required to obtain a concealed-carry permit for teachers and
school staff to carry guns in schools,
sometimes without seeking permission from or providing notiﬁcation to
their districts.
Educators Demand Action opened
the current legislative session monitoring guns-in-school bills in seven
states, the organization said, and
they expect that number to grow.
In a recent Montana legislative
hearing, the supporter of a bill
that would allow the concealed
carrying of guns in schools asked:

What would have happened if the
principal of Sandy Hook had been
armed? John Moffatt, a retired
Montana principal who works with
Moms Demand Action, stood to oppose the bill, speaking from his
own experience.

'Absolute Pandemonium'
In 1986, Moffatt was an assistant
principal at Fergus High School in
Lewistown when he heard a loud
noise upstairs. Thinking a boiler
had blown up, he ran upstairs.
In the hallway, he met the eyes of
a 14-year-old student and saw that
the boy had a gun. Moffatt would
later learn that the boy had shot
and killed the substitute teacher
monitoring his French class. From
about six feet away, the student shot
Moffatt in the side, causing him to
fall to his knees. The bullet went all
the way through him, its ricocheting
fragments bouncing off the cinder
block walls and striking the feet of
nearby students.
The student raised the gun again,
this time aiming for Moffatt's head.
He missed and the bullet struck
Moffatt's hand. The gunman then
ﬂed the school, running all the way
to his house where he was later
caught by police. Moffatt is certain
he couldn't have stopped the shooter
if he'd been armed. What may have
prevented the incident, Moffatt
said, was keeping the student from
ever getting his hands on the gun-
which belonged to a relative and
had been left unsecured in a truck.

Moffatt, a former hunter, said
he's not "anti-gun," but he wants
policymakers to be thoughtful and
consider evidence when they revise
gun laws. He can quickly describe
every shooting at a Montana school
or college in the last 50 years, and
explain why he doesn't think armed
staff would have prevented any of
those incidents.
Even police on campus that day
weren't able to prevent the attack,
Moffatt said, and the chaos after the
initial shots would have challenged
even the most skilled responder.
"There was screaming. There
was absolute pandemonium," he
said. "If you throw into that mix a
poorly trained teacher, or at least
minimally trained, and all of that
is going on around you... The only
thing that could have happened is
that it could have made the shooting worse."
He recounts his time working in
elementary schools, where young
children regularly approached to
hug his side, their faces falling
about where a gun would rest if he
wore it on his belt.
Moffatt and other educators involved in the gun debates said they
hope to help balance lawmakers'
conversations, which are sometimes
colored by fear and a lack of classroom experience.
"People who have no actual skin
in the game-they're not the ones
in the public schools, and they're not
the ones there day after day-are
the ones proposing this legislation,"
Moffatt said.

It shouldn't be up
to teachers to stand
up to gunmen
because our
Congress won't
stand up to the
gun lobby."
SHANNON WATTS
Founder, Moms Demand Action
for Gun Sense in America

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Education Week - March 1, 2017

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