“Just remember,” said the teacher holding the firearm, “I have zero tolerance for academic dishonesty.”
Photo by: Sage Cristal
A Florida instructor is the first person in the nation to be detained for violating the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Following a suggestion by President Trump to combat school shootings by arming teachers, the Tallahassee Unified School District voted to permit their staff to carry handguns. Mrs. Hyland, a local high school AP U.S. History teacher, refused to attend weapons training and was arrested during sixth period.
Her attorney issued a statement saying, “Mrs. Hyland refused to comply with the school’s orders because she is uncomfortable viewing her students as potential school shooters. She learned while getting her masters that singling out students is bad for their self-esteem, and Mrs. Hyland believes this rule extends to shooting at them.”
However, state attorney Nigel Myers argued that Hyland is in clear violation of the law. “The Second Amendment plainly states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. By refusing to keep a gun at her desk, she infringed on her own right to bear arms.”
“Our primary goal at Lakewood High School is the safety of our students,” Hyland’s boss, Principal Brown, said. “We reduced the amount of food we give them at lunch and switched to cheaper textbooks — the ones that are just sheets of paper that you put in a binder — to fund the new school safety policy. We even got rid of the arts program in the name of saving student lives.”
Not everything can be funded by reallocating money, however. “We’re accepting donations for our new school armory,” Principal Brown added. “We’ll name it after the highest donor.”
Many parents in the district support Hyland’s resistance to the policy, starting a GoFundMe to pay her legal fees and to buy history textbooks for her class. They also gathered at parent-teacher conferences to let the administration know they would be upset if their children were shot by teachers or given failing grades.
“I’m a little concerned about giving the teachers at my daughter’s school guns. It’s not because my daughter’s teacher is Black. That has nothing to do with it. He seems very well-educated and nice when we talked. But I’m just a little uncomfortable with giving him — with giving any teachers a gun. It has nothing to do with skin color. One of my coworkers is Black, and he’s really cool. It’s a gun issue, not a race issue,” said a local white father.
Students in the district have mixed views on the new policy. Sixth-grader Alicia Rivera said, “One time, my teacher threw a crayon at me because I was talking too much and then blamed it on Billy Parker. I don’t want to know what he would do if he had a gun.”
“I’ve been cheating on our reading logs for five years straight,” said fifth-grader Alex Knox. “This rule isn’t going to change anything. My teachers are blind as shit. And I know where Ms. Nguyen would hide a gun — same place she hides the test answers.”
“I mean, if I have a gun, I have a gun,” commented an anonymous high school student. “So I can’t shoot it in a school zone now. Well, a majority of the state isn’t a school zone, so like, good luck stopping me, Dick Scott.”
Dana Loesch, NRA spokeswoman and professional handgun model, agrees. “The NRA understands that the vast majority of mass shootings happen outside of schools. That’s why, to decrease the amount of mass shootings, we propose making it illegal for everyone to not be carrying a gun at all times.”
