An Examination of Texas K-12 Teachers’ Opinions on Teacher and Staff Gun Carrying

ABSTRACT

While previous studies have assessed public opinions for arming teachers in K-12 schools in the United States, comparatively less research has focused on understanding teachers’ opinions for such policies and assessed whether and to what extent school- and individual-level factors are associated with differences in support. The current study aims to address these voids in the current body of literature by analyzing self-report data from a large sample of Texas K-12 educators (N = 9,196) to assess relations between theoretical correlates of teacher and staff gun carrying, demographic as well as school characteristics, and support for carrying. A series of logistic regression models reveal that favorable views of an emergency operation plan in a school setting and general negative view of guns in school are associated with lower odds of support. The strength of these associations varies across teacher and school characteristics. The implications of the reported results for K-12 school policy is discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Arming teachers
• firearms
• school gun carrying
• routine activities theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Diagnostics for missing cases within all independent measures in relation to the dependent variable revealed that, with the exception of the NVAT scale, all were missing at random (MAR). We therefore used listwise deletion for all missing cases for our measures. For the NVAT scale, we identified n = 214 missing cases, and χ² tests indicated these were not missing at random (NMAR). However, given that the missing cases amounted to 1.9% of the variable’s total case records, we used listwise deletion for these cases.

2. The IICM values reported here are the lowest correlational values that appeared within their respective matrix. Therefore, all correlations between measures in each scale exceeded the reported IICM value. This was done in lieu of providing five correlation matrices (i.e., one for each additive scale).

3. We also produced a bivariate correlation matrix between the individual measures making up the NVAT scale and our main dependent variable (DV) given their theoretical relatedness (available upon request). Statistical results suggested that the individual measures in the NVAT scale were only moderately positively correlated with our main DV. Additionally, the linguistic and conceptual natures of the individual NVAT measures are distinct from the main DV, thereby avoiding any issue of tautology. Specifically, the individual NVAT measures encompass considerations centered on the consequences, conditional outcomes, and potential risks that may result from arming teachers/staff, whereas the main DV merely asks respondents whether they support arming teachers/staff, not about the substantive risks of doing so.

4. Diagnostics assessing multicollinearity revealed all tolerance scores were above .1 and all variance inflation factor scores (VIF) were below 4, indicating that multicollinearity was not an issue in any of our multivariate models.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Benjamin P. Comer

Dr. Benjamin P. Comer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Texas Christian University. His research focuses on gun violence, school gun violence, and mass gun violence. His additional areas of research focus on data accuracy and comparability, and spatial criminology. His research has been published in several peer-reviewed academic journals, including Preventive Medicine, Social Science & Medicine, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Criminal Justice and Law, American Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Criminal Justice Education, and Criminal Justice Review.

Eric J. Connolly

Dr. Eric J. Connolly is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. His research examines biological and social factors for antisocial behaviors and different forms of victimization across the life course. His work has appeared in journals such as Child Development, Child Maltreatment, Criminology, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Adolescent Health, and Social Science & Medicine.

Matthew B. Fuller

Dr. Matthew B. Fuller is a Professor of Higher Education Leadership and Director of the Doctoral Program in Higher Education Leadership at Sam Houston State University. He is also the Director of the Center for Assessment, Research, and Educational Safety (C.A.R.E.S.) at Sam Houston State University. Dr. Fuller’s research interests focus on culture and leadership in educational organizations, threat assessment, assessment and accountability, law, behavioral intervention, and educational safety. He has authored numerous books, monographs, and articles and presented on a variety of topics throughout his career.