Woody Hayes on Guns

With all due apologies to U of M fans.

Woody Hayes, the legendary Ohio State University football coach was fond of saying ...

“Three things can happen when you pass the football, two of them are bad.” Pedantic gits, see end note.

Whoa! hold on there, I thought this was about guns? Well, they do talk about "gunning" the football, but that's not what this is about. This is more about how to look at a question analytically. This idea implicit in this quote is that passing the football is a risky move. Now Woody threw the ball as much as anyone in this area of college football but the point stands; throwing the football is high risk. But in the case of the game of football, it is also high reward. You gain much more yardage per successful completion then you do running the ball, with more turnovers.

So, what does this have to do with guns? Well, there is a current debate brewing in the wake of the parkland school shooting about arming teachers. On its face, it seems like a pretty reasonable proposal. Teachers who are so inclined could get special training and would be allowed to carry guns in the classroom. But when you look deeper into the proposal it falls completely apart. Let's look at it in the same way Coach Hayes might have looked at it.

A friend of mine, her name is Emily and is a working teacher, cobbled together a little list of all the possible things that could go right or wrong when you have a gun in the classroom. Here is just a snippet of the incredible post she wrote on this subject:

First, my perspective from being in the classroom with REAL children of various ages. To the lady running for school board and everyone else who believes these horrific tragedies can be avoided if teachers would only carry a weapon...you’ve obviously never been in a classroom. Let me clue you in. If you’re in an elementary building you’re responsible for around 30 kids, each of them with different needs, abilities, and personalities. During any given time of day, you could have one child crawling around on the floor, at least one child poking around your desk for candy, staples, and god knows what, and several other kids following you around the room. Meanwhile, you’re leaning in to support little Johnny who can’t remember steps to multiplying while simultaneously giving Susie the look as you catch her snatching Natalie’s calculator across the room.....

And here is the list of possible outcomes of having armed teachers in the classroom slightly edited from  that post:

1. Teacher shoots the active shooter. Yay! Best case scenario but not all that likely for a number of reasons.
2. Teacher shoots him/herself intentionally. Awful but not unlikely given the stress of the job and today’s educational climate.
3. Teacher shoots him/herself accidentally. Much more likely since most gun-related injuries are accidental.
4. Teacher shoots student intentionally. Less likely but a distinct possibility nonetheless.
5. Teacher just decides to squeeze off a few rounds in school just because. I had to add this one because of something that just happened recently.
6. Teacher shoots student accidentally. Much more likely considering that most children completely lack the concept of personal space and are basically giant stumbling toddlers.
7. Student gets ahold of the gun and shoots him/herself accidentally. Again, way more likely since they are already in the unbelievably poor choice territory. 
8. Student gets ahold of the gun and shoots him/herself intentionally, hard to tell what happens with a student who is messed up enough to try and get their hands on teachers gun in the first place.
9. Student gets ahold of the gun and shoots another student accidentally.
10. Student gets ahold of the gun and just decides to squeeze off a few rounds in school just because.

So there it is, by my count that is 10 things that can happen and 9 of them are bad. But let's consider a few more things. Mass shootings are tragic and we have a difficult time even comprehending the" why" that motivates individual to do these things. But in the overall scheme of things they are extremely rare. Rare to the point of Powerball jackpot rare. The fact that we spend time on doing "active shooter drills" is almost comically futile. But we also do fire drills and tornado drills, other events that, while less rare, these are still events that the overwhelming majority of us will never experience even once in our lifetime. But it seems prudent to do these drills and it really doesn’t take up all that much time and they can all be combined. It also allows for a little break in the routine which can be beneficial.

But most of these teachers will be going through all of this and carrying the weapon for an event that may never happen, meanwhile, all of those other outcomes are in play every day. There is no way these volunteer teachers are going to drill frequently enough to be prepared for the split-second decision making and cool head that would be required to be effective against an active shooter with an AR-15 who has planned his assault in advance and likely knows exactly what he is going to do. (I'm purposely not using gender-neutral terms here because the active shooter problem seems to exclusively be a male problem, which is a whole other post).

Also, a teacher will now have to make a choice between leading and protecting children and teenagers who are scared out of their wits and are in desperate need of leadership at this crucial moment of trying to clear the building of an active shooter with, at best, a handgun. Not to even mention those who are in charge of developmentally disabled students which is even a further burden.

  If schools are retrofitted with security in mind, like heavy doors that can be shut and locked from the inside, the teacher is better off staying with the kids in the classroom and waiting it out.

Also, there is no way to know if you could get a critical mass of teachers to take on the responsibility of carrying a gun in a way that would cover an entire school building. You would need an even distribution of armed teachers (or staff) throughout the building to even make this in the realm of effective. and that's just not going to happen. We would be so much better off using resources to improve the buildings for safety, install automatic doors that would cut off an assailant, and could be controlled from several places in the building and do better on who is allowed on campus in the first place. And we haven't even started to talk about upgrades in school services and counselors, reduced class sizes.  All of these things will take money, and lots of it. Frankly, people are looking to the armed teacher idea as a way to offer protection to kids on the cheap. All I know is you get exactly what you pay for and those who are convinced that this is a good idea haven't thought this through the way Woody Hayes would have.

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For all of those who are going to tell me that this isn't a Woody Hayes quote, I understand. The quote has been attributed to many legendary coaches including our own, beloved University of Michigan Football Coach Bo Schembechler. Here is the relevant research: Quote Investigator On the origin of the pass the football quote