More than half of the country's teachers believe arming themselves would make students less safe, while one in five say they would be interested in carrying a gun to school, according to a new report from the RAND Corporation.
The survey, which was conducted in October and November 2022, found that 54% of teachers think carrying firearms would make schools less safe, 20% believe teacher-carry programs would make schools safer, and 26% feel it would make schools neither more nor less safe.
The report zeroed in on how K-12 teachers viewed safety in their schools, and responses varied according to both teachers' and students' race and ethnicity.
White teachers felt that carrying firearms would make schools safer more than their Black colleagues did, and male teachers in rural schools said they would personally carry a firearm in their school if allowed, according to the survey findings.
The survey estimates 550,000 of the country's 3 million K-12 teachers would choose to carry a firearm at school if allowed.
The debate over whether to arm the nation's schoolteachers isn't new and is often renewed after school shootings. But instead of active shooters, bullying is the most common safety concern for about half of all teachers, the report says.
After bullying, high school teachers were most often concerned about drug use and student fights, according to the report. Middle school teachers ranked self-harm as a top concern and elementary teachers were more frequently concerned about violence against teachers, according to the data.
Roughly half of teachers surveyed felt that physical security measures at their schools such as locks, ID badges, cameras and security staff, positively affected their school's climate, the report found, and only 5% of teachers felt those security measures had a negative effect.
In a separate survey conducted in the fall of 2022, 70% of school district leaders said they've increased their investments in school safety measures in response to the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Teachers reported more concern for their students' safety rather than their own, according to the survey.
After analyzing the survey's results, researchers noted a few areas ripe for further research, such as studying schools or districts that have adopted teacher-carry programs early on to:
- Observe how they work in practice;
- Develop approaches for school safety and security planning that might balance the frequent, lower-level forms of school violence such as bullying with lower-probability, extreme forms of school violence like shootings;
- And conduct a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis of programs allowing teacher-carry to see what the full monetary costs to schools and states would be.
