Doug Mastriano calls for arming school employees to protect kids

School employees with a license to carry a firearm would be permitted to carry a weapon at work under legislation introduced on late last week by state senator and Republican gubernatorial hopeful Doug Mastriano.

The Franklin County senator stated in a memo to his Senate colleagues that his desire to allow school employees who want to be armed to carry firearm in schools, arose in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

“Mass murderers are often attracted to ‘soft targets’ where they know victims are not armed,” Mastriano said in a statement released last week. Citing data from gun rights advocate John R. Lott’s Crime Prevention Research Center, he said, “there has not been a single mass shooting in a school where staff were permitted to carry a firearm.”

If enacted, Pennsylvania would join 29 other states that allow teachers to carry firearms, including Ohio, which enacted its law in June.

Mastriano’s bill, Senate Bill 1288, would require school employees who want to possess a firearm in the course of their duties to have completed an in-person firearm training. The course would last between 15 and 30 hours and must include training on such topics as interactions with first responders, safe handling and storage of weapons and tactics for denying intruders entry to a classroom. The employee also must be certified as proficient with the firearm to be able to carry it on school grounds.

The bill also would require the school to issue a school safety certificate and provide the name and a full-face photo of those certified employees every year that could be shared upon request with state police or local police with jurisdiction over the school.

“This will allow law enforcement to know who is certified to carry should they need to enter the building in an active shooter situation,” Mastriano said.

His bill would not mandate schools or their employees to carry a firearm “but would give school staff the ability to be a last line of defense if they choose to go through the certification process,” he said.

“Sadly, there are some who think they shouldn’t have that choice such as the leadership of the Pennsylvania State Education Association,” Mastriano said. “They believe that even if a school employee has been trained, permitted, and certified, that employee should not have the ability to defend students in a worse-case life and death scenario.”

PSEA said it has concerns about opening the door to non-law enforcement to have firearms on school grounds.

“Teachers, counselors, and support staff are trained to provide a high-quality education to our students, not to carry or use firearms in a dangerous situation,” said PSEA spokesman Chris Lilienthal. “The minimum 15 hours of training proposed in Sen. Mastriano’s legislation comes nowhere close to the level of training that law enforcement officers receive. This approach will undoubtedly put students, staff, and first responders at greater risk in a crisis situation.”

Arming teachers is an area where Mastriano and his Democratic gubernatorial opponent, state Attorney General Josh Shapiro, part ways.

“Attorney General Shapiro does not believe we should be arming teachers — he believes they should be able to focus on what they do best: teaching our kids,” said Shapiro spokesman Manuel Bonder. “Shapiro supports existing Pennsylvania law that ensures teachers can teach and school safety is in the hands of trained professionals. As governor, he will continue working with law enforcement and lawmakers from both parties to ensure our schools are safe.”

A national survey by Morning Consult/EdChoice conducted in June found the idea was less popular with teachers than it is with school parents.

Just 21% of the 1,000 teachers polled said they would carry a firearm if allowed on school grounds, while 60% of 476 parents polled said they would strongly or somewhat support allowing teachers/administrators to carry a gun in school.

Five Republican senators signed on as cosponsor to Mastriano’s bill. They include Sens. Scott Hutchinson of Venango County, Bob Mensch of Montgomery County, Kristin Phillips-Hill of York County, Mario Scavello of Monroe County and Joe Pittman of Indiana County.

Pittman’s Senate predecessor, Don White, had introduced similar legislation in past legislative sessions as far back as 2013 following a stabbing incident in a suburban Pittsburgh school district. White’s bill met with strong opposition from the teachers union and gun violence prevention groups, and when Gov. Tom Wolf came into office in 2015, a threatened veto.

Sen. Mike Regan, R-Cumberland/York counties, a former U.S. marshal, voted in favor of White’s bill when it passed the Senate in 2017 but not the House, but did so with reservations he still has today.

He said while an armed school employee could be a deterrent as well as provide an opportunity for a quicker response in rural areas, he is concerned about the adequacy of the proposed minimal amount of training to equip employees to use a firearm in such high-stress situations.

“You really can’t prepare for what you go through physiologically without intense training and being put under stress during training exercises,” Regan said. “Shooting at a target does not prepare you for what you’re going to go through.”

He said he prefers having an armed, trained, and vetted school police/resource officer or police officer over arming teachers.

“They’ve been through hundreds of hours of firearm training. They know what to do. They know all the do’s and the don’ts,” Regan said. “Let the law enforcement professionals protect and let the teachers teach. I think there needs to be a division with the only caveat that I know in some school districts that’s impossible.”

This year’s state budget included $100 million for school safety and security. Mastriano takes credit for spearheading efforts to secure that funding. The budget also includes $100 million for student mental health services. Shapiro’s plan for making schools safer includes putting a mental health counselor in every school and giving students access to tele-mental health, along with gun safety measures.