Empowering Teachers with Firearm Rights - From the Desk of Senator Toews

Why House Bill 415 protects safety and liberty

House Bill 415 allows teachers with an enhanced concealed carry license the option to carry a concealed weapon in school. This will make our schools safer, and the alternative is an affront to liberty.

SAFETY

With crime and school shootings on the rise in our country, it is ever more vital we take steps to keep kids safe. Allowing teachers who are properly trained to carry a firearm securely within their clothing if they so choose increases safety. Police understand this, and its coherence is well attested. While the media doesn’t seem to enjoy this fact, armed civilians regularly stop mass shooters! The ‘gun-free zone’ designation is likely counterproductive, and it is time we recognize this reality. What does work is potential attackers being aware that any teacher could be concealing a handgun. After all, there have been no school shootings where teachers are allowed to carry guns. None!

LIBERTY

Our 2nd Amendment protects the personal right to self-defense and has been incorporated to apply to the states, and Idaho has a special firearm tradition. There is no excuse for abridging this in schools; a right means very little in the face of a litany of exceptions, and indeed, the self-defense principle is as relevant here as anywhere else. Every moment counts in an active shooter scenario; school resource officers and armed guards are often not a viable or full solution, and by the time it takes police to arrive in a crisis, especially in rural areas, a shooter may have had the ability to kill many while unchallenged. Will we force our teachers to hide in corners without recourse? It violates our longstanding legal and social self-defense tradition to render teachers helpless when they would otherwise be willing and able to defend themselves and their students.

OTHER FACTS

I have also heard a misconception that this bill grants a sort of blanket immunity to any teacher who might mishandle a gun. The bill does not do that. Rather, the lack of liability for “deciding to engage or not to engage” is just another way of saying that it is a legally legitimate choice to take up arms against a shooter as well as not to act. This provision would not deny anyone the possibility of legal recourse.

In addition to upholding 2A, the legislation protects teacher privacy. It also doesn’t infringe on property rights, allowing private schools the option to determine their own policies. I am committed to promoting safety in the same breath as liberty, and this is exactly the effect of House Bill 415.

Sincerely,

Ben Toews

Idaho State Senator – District 4