In the last year, the number of school districts in Ohio that allow staff to be armed has quadrupled. What’s behind the big increase?
CBS News reported on the increase in Ohio schools that allow staff to have guns this week. It said that 14% of the state’s districts allow for staff to be armed, citing the Ohio School Safety Center.
According to Axios Cleveland, 63 school districts in the state had registered to be able to arm non-police staff members as of May. Per the Ohio Department of Public Safety, that was up from 22 districts as of March 2023.
Axios also reported that Ohio had the fifth highest number of firearm incidents at K-12 schools in the U.S. over the past decade at 127, behind California, Texas, Florida and Illinois. Overall, there were 1,468 firearm incidents at K-12 elementary schools during the decade ending in 2023 – a 324% compared to the previous decade.
In 2022, Ohio made it easier for teachers and other adults in K-12 schools to carry guns with written permission from the board of education or governing body, said Giffords Law Center. To be approved, a person who wishes to carry a firearm on school grounds is required to submit to an annual background check and take a training course developed by the Department of Public Safety. It includes no more than 24 hours of instruction and no more than eight hours for annual re-certification. Axios said the Ohio Controlling Board approved the purchase of two portable training centers in March that can be used to train staff.
“Our goal is to continue to help our public and private schools get the tools they need to protect our children,” said Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in 2022. “Working together, we have come a long way to improve school safety in Ohio over the last decade, and we must continue this progress. We have an obligation to do everything we can every single day to try and protect our kids.”
Outside of Dayton, Ohio, about 20 teachers who work for the Mad River Local School District have been given guns, according to CBS News. Mad River Superintendent Chad Wyen – the only armed member of the staff whose identity is public – had the idea to arm the staffers. They keep the firearms kept in locked safes.
Past incidents have shown that even when law enforcement is called to a school shooting violence is sometimes not prevented. One glaring example is the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas. Authorities who responded to that mass shooting have been investigated and criticized for their lack of action at the scene, though they were armed.
Additionally, The Trace said in a report from last summer that “there are only a handful of documented cases in which an armed security guard or stationed police officer has stopped a school shooting.” A study by researchers from The Violence Project also indicated that armed guards in schools don’t reduce fatalities.
However, The Trace said there have been “several notable instances, unarmed bystanders have successfully ended school shootings,” though two it mentioned did not involve the use of guns by teachers.
“An Indiana teacher stopped a student from firing a handgun in 2018 by throwing a basketball at him, then retrieving the gun,” said The Trace. “And in 2021, after a teacher in Idaho took a gun from a sixth-grade girl, she pulled the student into a hug.”
Wyen said that, for Mad River, guns locked away in safes for staff serve as a safety measure for the eight-school district that shares one school resource officer. He added that “there’s no way” for police to get to the school in time to deal with a shooting incident if one happened. So far, no students have brought guns to Mad River campuses.
“So typically, there’s a live round in the chamber,” Wyen said. “We have to be prepared.”