Security in our schools and elsewhere is the job of law enforcement, not teachers.

The Mississippi Senate is considering a bill — The School Safety Act — that proposes arming teachers in schools to prevent future school shootings.

State Sen. Briggs Hopson, a Vicksburg Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary A Committee that moved the bill to the Senate floor, said the bill would provide an option for schools to improve the safety of students, staff and faculty.

Hopson said the decision by school administrators whether to arm teachers is discretionary, not mandatory. He said the bill “puts another tool in their (school boards’) toolbox” and allows them to designate one or more individuals who would have intensive training on school situations.

Hopson stressed that armed teachers would have to have intensive, detailed training to make certain they are qualified, as well as working with law enforcement to “make sure this is done properly if they’re going to do it at all.”

As part of the bill, trained teachers or employees would be immune from criminal prosecution or civil lawsuits if they shot someone as part of their school security duties.

The reasons this bill is a bad idea are many.

First, our public school teachers have their hands full already. Most school districts are facing a teacher shortage, in fact.

By every account, public school teachers are overworked and underpaid and must dip into their own pockets to pay for supplies and the like for their students. Add the responsibility of school safety on top of that and the demand on teachers becomes ridiculous.

Next, consider the fact that a teacher in a classroom with a handgun is not alone. That teacher has upwards to 30 students in the classroom with them. Having a gun in that classroom during times when the teacher is having a discipline issue with a student or students simply means a heightened risk of having that gun taken away and used by a student. That’s just not an acceptable risk to take.

And as we’ve painfully witnessed more times than we should have, a handgun is no match for someone with an assault rifle intent on creating maximum casualties.

We applaud the effort by Hopson and the state legislature to work to make our schools a safer place for students and staff, but we see this legislation creating far more problems than it will solve.

School security should be in the hands of law enforcement, and if that means the Legislature needs to appropriate more funds to make that happen, then that’s what they should do.