Schulte, Cops Differ On Teacher And Guns

It’s a scenario every student, teacher, and parent fears.  It’s midmorning when the school’s principal comes on the intercom and orders the school to perform a total lock down. Students in the hall are instructed to find the nearest classroom. Teachers are instructed to lock all their doors and cover all windows. Students sit silently, muscles constricting, as a nervous tension creeps into the air.

Students look towards their teacher for support, for guidance. The teacher is confident, and prepared for the situation. Gunshots and screams are heard from down the hall. Footsteps approach from the direction of the shots. Students in the classroom are now huddling like penguins, in the far corner of the room. Instead of joining the huddle, the teacher pulls out their gun from the inside of their jacket, and stand facing the door, prepared to protect themselves and their students.

Everytown for Gun Safety calculates in the fourteen months after the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting, there have been at least 44 additional school shootings. In the first 6 weeks in 2014, there were 13 school shootings alone. In 2012, more than 80 bills were introduced in more that 33 states, including Utah, related to arming the school staff.

Today, teachers in Utah are allowed to carry guns if they have a concealed weapon permit. Recently, a teacher at Westbrook Elementary School in Taylorsville Utah accidentally shot herself in the leg when the weapon discharged in the faculty bathroom. This event saw a lot of press and brought up a big controversy in Utah.

When Principal Paul Schulte was informed of this news, he was very troubled and filled with discomfort.

“I’d rather we didn’t have guns at school,” Schulte said. “I try to empathize and try to understand how other folks feel, but personally I have a lot of anxiety with fire arms, they make me uncomfortable.”

Many others feel that faculty armed with concealed weapons is an additional danger to school’s safety. They use the incident at Westbrook to justify the fact that weapons could easily discharge and severely harm teachers and/or students.

Andrew Pederson, a police officer at Highland, says that he feels bad for the teacher that was accidentally shot in the leg. He feels that the negative press this incident received makes it hard for parents and students to see the good in concealed weapons.

“If there is an active shooter in the school, I’d like to have as many people on my team as possible,” Pederson said.

Pederson believes that certain teachers should carry concealed weapons but that the qualifications to receive a concealed carrier permit should be more intense and vigorous. Because the location of Pederson’s office is on the first level, it takes time for him to move from floor to floor. On the occasion that there was a shooter on the third level, there could be a lot of damage by the time he reached the shooting. If a teacher on the third floor possessed a weapon and could protect students and faculty until he got there, the results would be considerably improved. Pederson says that if there is a teacher that can get to the scene before him and stop it, then it is a win-win situation.

Currently, the gun control laws will stay where they are. If it were up to Hailey Lind, a sophomore at Highland, there would be absolutely no guns allowed in classrooms.

“I think that they (teachers) would probably be able to defend themselves and their students better, but if there were more gun control laws, there probably wouldn’t be shootings in the first place,” she said.

Kerrie Baughman, an English teacher at Highland also agrees with Lind.

“I don’t think that guns should be allowed at all,” Baughman said, “I am completely against it.”

Schulte says, “If I was king for a day, I would not allow concealed weapons…”

According to recent polls from UtahPolicy.com, 64 percent of the voters thought that teachers should be allowed to carry concealed weapons in school. For now, the law won’t be changing and concealed weapons will continue to be allowed in schools.Anamika Blomgren