Tennessee gun law: Will armed teachers make schools safer? | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on May 22) of The Excerpt podcast: On March 27th, 2023, a mass shooter at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, opened fire, killing three students and three staff members. In the aftermath of yet another U.S. school shooting, Tennessee legislators passed a bill permitting teachers and other school faculty to arm themselves. They’re not alone. According to the Giffords Law Center, roughly half of all states allow school employees who have concealed carry permits to carry firearms on school grounds. Opposition to the Tennessee bill has been fierce. Still, the question remains: how do we keep our schools safe from gun violence? Rachel Wegner, children’s education reporter for The Tennessean, a Gannett network property, joins The Excerpt to discuss Tennessee’s controversial new law.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024. And this is a special episode of The Excerpt. On March 27th, 2023, a mass shooter at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee killed 3 students and 3 staff members. In the aftermath of yet another US school shooting, Tennessee legislators passed a bill permitting teachers and other school faculty to arm themselves. They're not alone. According to the Giffords Law Center, roughly half of all states allow school employees who have concealed carry permits to carry firearms on school grounds. Opposition to the Tennessee bill has been fierce, still the question remains how do we keep our school safe from gun violence? Here to discuss Tennessee's controversial new bill, we're joined by Rachel Wegner, children's education reporter for The Tennessean, a Gannett Network property. Thanks for being on The Excerpt, Rachel.
Rachel Wegner:
Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
What was the impetus for the passage of this bill?
Rachel Wegner:
So Republican lawmakers actually brought this bill forward before the school shooting, a couple of months before. Their main arguments, then and now, centered around the ongoing law enforcement shortage nationwide, which consequently trickled down to a shortage of school resource officers in the state. So they said that that would possibly help alleviate some of that shortage. Also, I've heard arguments that the gun-free school zones actually make them easier targets for potential assailants. So those same lawmakers have also argued that that might alleviate that risk as well.
Dana Taylor:
What does the bill require for school faculty members who wish to carry a gun? And if a teacher chooses to arm themselves, who must sign off on it first?
Rachel Wegner:
So the bill maps out several requirements for teachers or staff who wish to carry a concealed weapon. They have to go through an extensive background check that includes fingerprinting. They also have to go through an initial 40 hours of training and then also annually go through that. There's also a psychiatric evaluation involved, along with just the obtaining of a permit to carry a gun in Tennessee. The folks that have to sign off include the district director or superintendent, the school principal, and then the leader of whichever local law enforcement agency they've gone into an agreement with.
Dana Taylor:
And teachers who carry must complete 40 hours of basic training in school policing. What does that entail?
Rachel Wegner:
So the basic police training for schools is not specifically mapped out in the bill itself. It does say it needs to be aligned with Tennessee standards for training police who work in schools. I'm still working to learn more about those specifics. However, I did speak to the Director for the National Association of School Resource Officers and he explained that their training, while it does have an active shooter component, it's not focused on that. It has elements like adolescent brain development, mental health, special needs, behavioral threat assessment along with just the nuances of working in a sensitive environment like a school as an armed officer.
Dana Taylor:
You've reported that some districts are already saying they won't approve requests to carry. Have you been able to gauge which way teachers and school administrators stand on this issue?
Rachel Wegner:
So I reached out to about a dozen districts just in the immediate region around Middle Tennessee and I'd say eight or nine of them now have said no. Along with statewide, we've heard from the major metro districts in Memphis and in Knoxville as well and here in Nashville that they're not planning to implement this. I have heard lots of feedback from teachers, parents, students, administrators that are very concerned about how this bill works, how this newly enacted law works. And I also heard a few that genuinely struggled with the idea of would I want to be able to help if there was an assailant in my school? But then there's 100 more questions that they ask about what that means, and what exactly is required of them, and what kind of training would need to be in place for them to feel comfortable.
Dana Taylor:
According to the Giffords Law Center, Tennessee does not impose a penalty if a person fails to secure an unattended firearm and leaves it accessible to an unsupervised minor. Has the issue of safe storage in schools been addressed by Tennessee lawmakers?
Rachel Wegner:
So the law as passed does not include any measure in that regard. It was proposed as an amendment that was ultimately struck down. I believe Democratic lawmakers proposed that. The bill does mention places where teachers and staff cannot carry weapons. That includes things like school assemblies, I believe tenure meetings, disciplinary meetings, but it doesn't specify what they do with the weapon when they go into those places without it.
Dana Taylor:
There were hundreds of protesters against this bill at the Capitol when the bill was passed, including parents, teachers, and students. Were there any supporters of the bill at the Capitol that day?
Rachel Wegner:
Not that I saw. It doesn't mean that they weren't present, but by and large, the folks in the public spaces in the Senate gallery where I was sitting the day it passed the Senate, or out on the Capitol steps the day that the House went back into session, or even the folks that were there when it ultimately passed the House, seemed to be in protest of the bill. The ones that I've heard voice their support for it are of course the Republican lawmakers in those floor sessions.
Dana Taylor:
Rachel, what stuck out to you most at the protest?
Rachel Wegner:
The first thing that stood out to me was the presence of mothers of the Covenant School students. They've been showing up for any and every piece of gun legislation that's been before the Tennessee State House. So the day I was there in the Senate gallery, I was watching them sitting in a row sort of removed from the rest of the group and holding up signs protesting this piece of legislation. A few of them had shaky hands while they were holding their signs. And then at some point the speaker of the Senate asked for the gallery to be cleared of those that were causing disruptions. And the Covenant School moms were in tears watching the gallery get cleared out. I spoke to one of them saying, "It feels like our voice is being taken away and this makes me want to move." So it was difficult to watch, and I spoke to them after those hearings and heard similar feedback from each of them.
Dana Taylor:
And how have the Covenant moms, and that is a group of women whose children died or survived that school shooting, how have they continued to rally against the implementation of this bill?
Rachel Wegner:
So they have started a letter to oppose the bill and now the law. And last I checked, it had gained almost 6,000 signatures from across the state. And that's people from all walks of life, parents, teachers, administrators, health professionals, and they all have voiced their opposition to this. I know that the Covenant School parents have also been instrumental in starting Voices for a Safer Tennessee, which is a nonpartisan organization that lobbies for gun control measures. And that also has been out demonstrating, showing up at hearings and sitting down with lawmakers individually to push for the changes they want to see.
Dana Taylor:
A lot of people in the community are deeply disturbed by the passage of this bill. What are some of the concerns they've shared with you?
Rachel Wegner:
So I've heard several people ask maybe three or four core questions. They say, "What happens if there's an active shooter in our school and we have armed teachers? Do they run out and confront the shooter? Do they stay with their children? What happens if they get hurt? Do the kids just get left terrified by themselves?" It's a grim question. There's also been questions that I've heard from experts saying, "What if law enforcement comes in and they see someone with a gun and they're not sure is this a teacher that's authorized to carry or is this a threat?" And there's also the circumstance where what if a teacher has to confront one of their own students and take their life? And these are questions that may or may not be addressed in the understanding between the law enforcement and district if they choose to adopt this option. But those are the questions I've heard the most. The if-then scenarios seem to be what's most on people's minds.
Dana Taylor:
And then finally, Rachel, is there anything that surprised you in your reporting here?
Rachel Wegner:
So something that stood out to me when I spoke to that Director of the National Association of SROs was he hasn't worked with a school district that's actually implemented this policy. Same answer from a national consultant for school safety, along with a Columbia professor who is leading an NIH-funded study of hundreds of schools, about if they have things like this in place. And he said, out of, I think the 700 districts they're talking to, none of them have implemented it. And if they're thinking about it, they're deeply hesitant. So those numbers and that unanimous response from three different sources with expertise in different parts of this surprised me.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for joining us, Rachel.
Rachel Wegner:
Of course, thank you.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks for our senior producers Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Will teachers armed with guns make schools safer in TN? | The Excerpt
