Iowa educators don't need guns

Educators need a lot of things. They need adequate on time school funding, parental support, dedicated school boards, administrators who’ll back them, supplies, adequate preparation time, professional pay, positive working conditions, technology, and a Legislature that supports public schools.

They don’t need guns.

House File 2652 was originally a $3 million grant program to purchase emergency radios for schools, but gun-loving legislators amended the bill to focus on firearms training, paying for the gun permitting process, stipends for employees agreeing to be armed, and for purchase of the weapons. The grants would be a total of $25,000 for each district chosen.

Ironically, Republicans have refused to follow the law by passing State Supplemental Aide for schools on time, forcing schools to guess for months about funding.

Buying guns for educators is a higher priority.

It’s irresponsible.

Also, House File 2586, the bill authorizing arming school employees recently advanced to the full education committee in the Senate.

There are at least four reasons these two bills are terrible ideas and will make schools more dangerous.

Insurance companies will have options.

Spirit Lake and Cherokee School boards voted to do this last year. Their insurance companies vetoed the idea by dropping insurance coverage. The new idea in House File 2586 seeks to avoid that problem by requiring training for armed staff and giving districts and employees qualified immunity from criminal and civil liability.

That move may keep insurance companies from dropping coverage, but it won’t keep them from raising liability premiums higher than the Golden Dome. These risk averse private entities. Educators trained and permitted won’t stop companies from assessing the risk and cashing in.

We haven’t learned.

We haven’t learned anything from the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Trained law enforcement cowered against one man with an assault weapon. Unless schools plan to issue AR-15s to educators, chances are they’ll be outgunned by a school shooter. Going up against a shooter intent on killing with a weapon of war holding only a pistol, is like shouting at the rain and expecting it to stop.

There are ways to secure schools, but it will take more than $25,000 grants and inadequate State Supplemental Aide.

There are no secrets.

Students will know who is armed and where the guns are stored. They also will eventually know the combinations to any locked gun boxes. That means angry students could also have access to weapons.

Although hard to admit. Another secret is the quickest to volunteer to be armed are often educators you don’t want armed. They might be the ones seeking the prestige and power that may come with it.

Overreactions could be deadly.

Most educators can de-escalate violent situations, but there are exceptions. If guns were available, the situation could turn deadly instead of just ugly. A community would be hard-pressed to recover from an educator killing a student in the heat of the moment or completely by accident.

I once joked, given my job as a union representative, if principals had guns, I might be dead. Some of our interactions were heated and volatile. I’ve stopped joking about that.

It’s not funny.

It would be awful if innocent lives were lost because legislators pandered to their base about guns. Mass shootings might be fueled by a combination of causes like mental health issues or poor parenting, but refusing to acknowledge easy access to guns as part of the problem is refusing to face reality.

Guns don’t belong in school.

Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City, taught in public schools for 11 years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association Regional Director for 27 years until retiring. BruceLear2419@gmail.com