Tennessee House Republicans on Tuesday passed legislation to allow some trained teachers and school staff to carry firearms despite aggressive opposition from Democrats and gun control advocates calling for the bill to be defeated. The bill is all but guaranteed to become law within weeks, as Gov. Bill Lee can either sign it or allow it to become law without his signature. Lee has never vetoed a bill.
The law requires criminal and mental health background checks of prospective teachers along with training courses and approval from school administrators. Democrats railed against the bill, suggesting that training courses are not enough and that it was “unfair” to burden teachers with the job of defending their classrooms from potential assailants. This argument is strange because teachers are already burdened with the job of protecting students from harm (not to mention their own lives), they just haven’t had the means to do that job until now.
Democrats also stated that armed teachers would “lead to tragedy,” with expectations that merely having a gun in or near a school would inevitably cause a shooting with the teacher at fault. Of course, if a teacher wanted to come to school armed to commit a crime, there’s nothing stopping them anyway (except perhaps another armed teacher).