McDonnell endorses discussion about arming teachers while Marshall goes further

Good news always comes in pairs and Tuesday in Virginia was no exception. It was on this fateful day that Gov. Bob McDonnell endorsed a discussion about arming Virginia’s teachers and our old friend, Del. Bob Marshall, proposed legislation to put weapons in Virginia’s schools.

During his monthly radio appearance on Washington-area radio station WTOP, McDonnell commented, “If people were armed, not just a police officer but other school officials who were trained and chose to have a weapon, certainly there would have been an opportunity to stop aggressors coming into the schools.”[1]

Del. Bob Marshall (Prince William County) also would like to see Virginia’s teachers armed with knowledge and semi-automatic weapons[2].  Marshall stated that his aim is to train “certain educators” on the safe use of weapons by Virginia State Police standards.

The entire issue of teachers being allowed to carry guns in school comes in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut elementary shooting that left 20 children dead.

The assumption that some Republicans are making in their calls to arm our country’s teachers is that doing so will prevent the kind of mass killings that occurred in Connecticut. But it is far from certain that putting guns into the hands of educators will produce any such effect.

Moreover, as has been pointed out[3], more guns is not solving the fundamental problems that have led to these senseless acts of violence. Even if we were to make a big assumption and concede that arming some teachers would cut down on the risks of mass school killings, it still would not address the reason for the shootings themselves.

If our elected representatives truly want to end the mass shootings that have become all too frequent in our own time, they’ll have to look for harder and more complex solutions than arming teachers. Thus, one of the first priorities that must be addressed is ending the unproductive partisanship that has ripped the nation.

It’s time for Virginia’s, and America’s, elected officials to lead and to do the harder thing by looking for lasting solutions to our country’s most vexing problems. Putting guns into the hands of teachers would only be putting a band-aid over a larger problem, a problem that the band-aid could even make worse.

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[1] http://hamptonroads.com/2012/12/bob-mcdonnell-discusses-arming-school-officials

[2] http://hamptonroads.com/2012/12/bob-mcdonnell-discusses-arming-school-officials

[3] http://www.examiner.com/article/mcdonnell-takes-a-number-of-political-steps-the-wake-of-connecticut-shootings