Bitter Gertrude

Emma González. Source: cnn.com

Listen, you and I both know that conservatives squawking about wanting to arm teachers have no intention of doing so. They refuse to pay for pencils, desks, adequate pay, building maintenance, or updated textbooks, so there’s no chance they’re allocating the funding to buy us all Glocks.

Recognizing this, Trump has floated the idea of issuing concealed carry licenses for teachers. This is a breathtakingly bad idea. Teachers carrying guns means students shot out of anger. How do I know? Because humans carrying guns means humans shot out of anger. And how do I know that? It happens in the US every single day of our lives. Almost all shootings are between people who know each other, and happen in the heat of the moment because a gun was readily available.

Who gets shot most often when an armed government employee confronts an unarmed teenager? Get ready for this headline at least once a month: “White Teacher Shoots Black Student; Says He ‘Felt Threatened.'”

As a teacher married to a teacher, I am always reluctant to point out the foolishness of my fellow educators. Most of us are working very hard for very little money and even less respect. And yet, I cannot pretend that teachers like this do not exist:

It took me just a few moments to connect this commenter to his teacher page on the website of his southern California public high school, in a city with 30% registered Democrats and 39% registered Republicans. Given the progressive bent of modern high school students, it’s a safe bet that this guy’s California classroom is at least half “satan infested scum” on a daily basis. Are you certain you want this math teacher, who not only openly despises half his students as Satanic scum, but feels perfectly fine stating so in a public forum, given the right to carry a firearm in the classroom?  Someone who believes half of America’s youth are “satan infested” but Donald J. Trump is “Godly” is so far removed from reality I would hesitate allowing him a sharpened pencil. We want to allow this man to carry a deadly weapon into the classroom?

While delusional, angry conservatives are thankfully rare in the teaching profession, they are not nonexistent. Nor are liberal teachers with short tempers, for that matter. Nor are clumsy teachers, or teachers with poor vision, or teachers who are easily flustered, because teachers are human beings. We are trained to educate others in specific academic disciplines. We are not trained armed guards. Even if we were, many schools (and other sites) that have experienced mass shootings have had armed guards or police on site. If a trained, experienced police officer can’t stop a shooter from killing people, what makes you think a Language Arts teacher can?

How would police arriving on scene be able to distinguish between a “bad guy” shooting into a crowd of running, screaming students and a “good guy” shooting into a crowd of running, screaming students? How many more innocent lives would be taken by an inexperienced teacher taking ill-advised shots? An active crime scene does not look like it does in the movies. The bad guy doesn’t stand there, in the open, monologuing, while everyone stands aside to give you a clear shot. It’s chaos. Professional law enforcement officers who are expert marksmen hit their target during an active shooter situation 18% of the time and sometimes hit innocent bystanders, but you expect Ms. Reynolds in Room 8 to take out an active shooter without accidentally killing students?

While we have far too many mass shootings, we have even more individual shootings. The presence of a gun greatly increases the likelihood of an innocent person getting shot, which seems painfully obvious, yet somehow still fought by gun nuts. Most of us have not been in a mass shooting situation, but all of us have seen a student piss off an overworked, frazzled teacher. Every teacher knows at least one colleague who has been threatened in their classroom by a student or parent.

We have ample evidence to demonstrate that angry, frazzled, or frightened people in power shoot young Black people and Native American people at alarmingly high rates. Black people are routinely shot when they are doing nothing more threatening than riding as a passenger in a car, playing with a toy, holding a cell phone, or walking down the street. Black and Native American people are shot when they are running away (see also this), complying with an officer’s orders, or sitting with their hands up. Black children are shot sleeping.

What about Black teachers? There are numerous Black people in the teaching profession. While Caucasians are quick to defend Caucasians who shoot a person of color, they are filled with rage and calls for retribution when a person of color shoots a white person, even accidentally. Are we going to arm Black teachers and defend them when they shoot innocent students the way we defend white police officers who shoot innocent citizens? Are we going to defend a Black teacher who shoots a white student because she “felt threatened”? Or even when she’s actually threatened by a student or parent?

And how many gun-toting teachers will shoot the woman who rejects them in the heat of the moment? Women are attacked or killed for rejecting men every single day. Are you ready for “Math Teacher Shoots Sophomore Who Rejected His Advances, Threatened to Tell Principal, Wife”?

There are many solid reasons not to arm faculty, but there are none more solid than this: students want fewer guns in their schools (and in their streets, and in their lives, and in their nation) and they’re not going to stop until they get exactly that.

Those fiery, witty, brilliant Marjory Stoneman Douglas students, who responded to their personal tragedy by setting the nation ablaze with their fierce activism? Those students are not at all unusual. Emma González, with her shaved head and her historic “we call BS” speech? Half my girls are like that. What gives these kids the guts, grit, and strength to put themselves out there, open themselves to the relentless harassment, death threats, and smear campaigns by gun-loving adults, is that they know this, too. They know there’s an entire generation behind them, they know that Black teens have been advocating for gun control for years (and received even worse harassment and threats), they know that their generation will swiftly outnumber us, and, as digital natives, they can organize more quickly and effectively than we can. We clutch our pearls complaining about teenagers and cell phones while those teenagers use those cell phones as hammers to reshape our world.

Emma González will be old enough to vote in 2020, and so will my students. “Libtards” aren’t coming for your guns under this extreme right wing administration, but Emma González and an entire generation of fierce, pissed off youngsters certainly will be soon enough. Soon enough those kids, in all their diversity and fierceness and lack of interest in your “BS,” will outnumber us. Soon enough the Senate and the House will be filled with those kids. Someone like Emma González– if not González herself, because DAMN– will be sitting in the White House. You think these kids are entitled, selfish, whiny snowflakes who need safe spaces, yet they are already demonstrating how much braver, how much bolder, how much tougher they are than we ever were. Compare adults who need a gun to feel safe, who need to pretend these kids are “crisis actors” in order to feel safe, who need to pretend young Black activists are “thugs” in order to feel safe, to González, and Cameron Kasky, and Sarah Chadwick, and David Hogg and Maxine Wint, and all the kids who continue to speak out, organize, and protest despite relentless harassment and death threats from adults.

I’m a teacher. If you want students to be safe at school, giving us guns will achieve the exact opposite. President González will just recall them all in 20 years anyway.