President Donald Trump has held up veterans as the ideal armed teachers who could ward off school shooters. But the reality is very few of today's educators served in the military, and those who did may reject the idea of carrying a gun to class.

Even with the influx of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans entering the workforce, just 2.1 percent of U.S. teachers in 2016 were veterans, according to federal data. In 1960, during the post-World War II era when Trump was a teen, 59 percent of male teachers had military service.


While some veterans among the nation’s teaching corps back Trump’s idea and see it as a calling to use their skills, others interviewed by POLITICO said they are adamantly opposed — even if they have the weapons familiarity that comes with military service. They said they worry about accidental discharges and that their skills are no longer fresh.

Dan Staples, a New Jersey math teacher, said he trained as a military police officer to respond to a mass school shooting. But he said it is a "perishable skill."

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“At the time, when I was doing that, I was in fantastic shape. I was going to the range. I was going to regular training … and that’s what I was prepared to do,” said Staples, a Marine who served in the pre-9/11 era. “Now, I’m prepared to be a math teacher. So I receive professional development on the quadratic formula and best methods of teaching and technology that pertains to my profession. I don’t get firearms training."

According to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Department of Education, 110,000 teachers in K-12 schools in 2016 were veterans, or 2.1 percent. In comparison, 5.4 percent of the civilian workforce had served. Overall, about 7 percent of the population had served in the military.

Still, military veterans are highly desirable teaching candidates. A federal program called Troops to Teachers since 1993 has worked to help veterans navigate leaving the military and entering teaching.

Several veterans who work in schools say they worry about perpetrating an accidental discharge or friendly fire incident that could hurt a child, the associated legal liability, and a potential change in the way they relate to their students if they carry a gun.

Others say their weaponry skills are no longer current — assuming they even learned to fire a pistol while in the military, the same type of weapon that an armed teacher would likely carry. Many Army infantrymen, for example, train to use a rifle but not extensively on how to fire a pistol.

Alexis Underwood, a seventh-grade language arts teachers in Florida who did a brief stint in the Marines in the early 1980s, said on paper she’d be a “great fit” for this type of program, but she would worry about children or others getting hurt by stray bullets or running into her line of fire.

“I can’t live with that," Underwood said.

Still, Underwood, who teaches at Mowat Middle School in Lynn Haven, a community with a heavy military presence, said there are other veterans who work in her building with differing opinions. Just as the general population is divided over whether teachers should be armed, she said there are teachers who are veterans who support the idea.

“People have mixed feelings about it. It’s a difficult thing and the stakes are high,” Underwood said. “We’re talking about our kids.”

Christopher Golden, an Army veteran studying agriculture education at California State University of Fresno, said he sees potential in the idea.

Golden, who aims to teach high school, said he would be willing to train to carry a gun in school but believes there should be strict rules about when firearms should be locked up — such as when a teacher is lecturing.

“As a veteran, I’m OK with it because I’ve already signed on that line before, that I’ll stand up and defend people,” Golden said.

Separately, Teach for America has about 80 military veterans participating in its program, which places teachers in high-needs schools in urban communities and elsewhere.

When Trump was a high school student at New York Military Academy, there were a lot more teachers who had served in the military. In 1960, 59 percent of all male teachers were military veterans, according to analysis of Census Bureau data by Steven Ruggles, director of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota. In those years, the census only asked men about their military service.

During a Feb. 22 meeting with local and state officials on school safety, Trump referred to military members who retire and become teachers as good candidates to be armed in schools.

“They know guns, they understand guns,” Trump said.

Trump said if someone like his chief of staff, John Kelly, a retired Marine four-star general, was a teacher, he wouldn’t mind Kelly having a gun.

“Nobody is going to attack that school. Because they know General Kelly is the history teacher. And he's got a concealed weapon,” Trump said.

Eryn Mounticure, director of Teach for America’s veterans initiative, said the group started to see an uptick in applicants from all branches of the military in 2012 — with more than half of the former military applicants identifying as a person of color. She said they have a strong desire to serve and are good at building strong relationships.

“A lot of the military veterans possess the characteristics we see in our most effective teachers,” Mounticure said.

But those characteristics don’t necessarily mean they should carry guns to school, some say.

Robert T. Myers, principal at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg, W. Va., who served as a marksmanship training instructor in the Marines during the Vietnam era, said he only has one other military veteran in his building, and that veteran served as a logistician and likely didn’t have much weaponry training.

Myers, who opposes arming teachers, said a lot of work would have to go into training the veterans and ensuring their skills are maintained. There are “many, many mistakes that can be made,” Myers said.

“Just because you were in the military doesn’t necessarily make you a good candidate,” Myers said. “It sounds very simple. OK, we’ll just arm these people. If somebody comes in the building we’ll go ahead and blow them away. But it’s much more complicated than that.”

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this report misstated the location of Spring Mills High School. It is in West Virginia.