Poll Finds NC Teachers Opposed To Being Armed In School

A new poll looks at North Carolina teachers' attitudes about having them carry guns in school and finds it's not an idea educators are embracing.

The idea of arming teachers has become a hot topic following last month's shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead. The Raleigh News and Observer partnered with the Elon University Poll to find out what a sample of almost 400 North Carolina educators thought of the idea.

Elon political scientist and poll director Jason Husser says it got an overwhelming thumbs down.

”We found a majority of North Carolina teachers did not like the idea of of arming teachers,” he says. “A majority of basically every demographic group we looked at said it was a bad idea.”

More than 70 percent of responders said they would not take a gun to school even if they were allowed to do so.

Husser says he was surprised to find that there was no statistical difference between urban, suburban and rural teachers in rejecting the idea.

The survey was structured to be representative of the teaching population in the state, so there were many more women polled than men. Again, Husser says the attitude among male respondents was not significantly different than their female colleagues.