Legislators have been working on the bill since last year.
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Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, signed a bill into law yesterday making it a whole lot easier for the state’s teachers to carry guns at school. The law cuts the amount of required training from 700 hours to just 24 hours, well below Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour recommendation. DeWine said legislators have been working on the bill since last year, but the recent school shooting in Uvalde, TX, “increased the urgency to enact it.”
There are plenty of critics. In a joint statement, two Ohio teachers’ associations called it “dangerous and irresponsible,” and the Fraternal Order of Police said 24 hours is not enough training to carry a firearm. The bill was debated for more than a year on Ohio’s House floor, where 360+ speakers opposed it and 20 people spoke in favor.
Zoom out: Ohio is one of at least 28 states that allow teachers and staff to be armed on school campuses in the US, according to a 2020 Rand Corp study. A number of states have empowered teachers to carry weapons in the past decade: In 2013, Texas introduced a school marshal program to make it easier for select employees to carry guns on school grounds, and following the school shooting in Parkland in 2018, Florida passed a law allowing educators to be armed.—MM
