Arming teachers is hard, even in gun-loving Texas

 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/27/arming-teachers-hard-gun-loving-texas-00035794

Texas’ top law enforcement official proposed new efforts to arm educators after a rifle-toting gunman killed 19 children and two teachers inside a local classroom this week. State statistics suggest most teachers aren’t interested.

For more than a decade, state laws have allowed teachers to go to work empowered as armed school security — or the last line of defense against an active shooter.

But Texas, a state with a fabled gun culture, has allowed teachers to sign up as campus “marshals” since 2013 through a program signed into law after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. The initiative has seen fewer than 300 educators sign up across 62 school districts, according to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, even after some restrictions around the program were loosened following a deadly 2018 mass shooting at a Houston-area high school.