To truly study the arming of teachers …

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After recent school shootings, the proposed solution for protecting students is arming teachers. Before that, armed security at the school was the solution but that proved ineffective with failures such as at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and other assaults. The proposal for arming teachers is an extension of the trope "to stop a bad guy with a gun, you need a good guy with a gun."

I have not seen any published studies to prove that an armed teacher would stop an armed intruder.

Warning — "S" words ahead: Study the effectiveness of armed teachers using scientific analysis and statistics. A well-designed study requires at least five independent tests with at least 20 data points in each test. Others may quibble with these requirements, but as long as a study can be performed, I welcome their discussion points.

A study of this scope will require a lot of coordination and cooperation of many entities, including teachers, school administrators, parents, local law enforcement, state legislatures, etc.

The term "designed experiment" can be intimidating and such efforts can be a bit complex. Without getting bogged down in all the details here, you would need to recruit 100 to 150 teachers and schools willing to participate in the study. The number of schools could be reduced if you had several volunteer teachers in one school. Ideally, each test would be in multiple school districts; however, coordination might be easier with a large school district that had many schools willing to participate.

All the teachers would attend the armed response training together. After that, they would be issued a specially designed airsoft handgun with a small magazine. The size and weight of the airsoft guns should be similar to that of the gun being proposed to arm the teachers. There also would need to be a plan to explain the study to the students and parents to help reduce their stress.

It would be important to have a break between the training and the simulated assault to reflect the real world of how training diminishes over time.

After an agreed-upon time, an "armed intruder" would break into the classrooms using a high capacity air soft rifle. It would be important not to allow guns capable of shooting live ammunition in these classrooms during the entire study. You don't want a tragedy like the one that happened on the movie set for "Rust."

The "armed intruders" would be assigned the date of their "assault." Secrecy of the assault date is important, so as not to put the teachers on high alert. During the classroom assault, if the armed teacher could shoot the assailant before getting shot themselves, that would count as a win. If the assailant shot the teacher first, that would count as a fail. After all classrooms had their attack, wins and losses would be totaled. Then simple statistical analysis could be run to show if the armed teacher repelled the intruders.

This could be traumatic for the children, so they would need special instruction throughout the study, and those mental health resources talked about after all of the school shootings would need to be available throughout the study.

This could be a very expensive study, requiring a lot of personnel and finances. I think that the gun lobbies and manufactures should be more than willing to help fund such a study, since they have the potential to benefit from the results, but they could not be otherwise involved, to prevent biasing the study or results.

The state governments that are rushing legislation to allow teachers to be armed should also be willing to fund the studies.

There are many aspects of a well-designed study not included here. But if we want to prove whether or not armed teachers can stop an intruder, we need to rely on science and statistics. I know these "S words" can be triggers for some people, but using well-designed studies is better than shooting from the hip.

Michael Bennett, of Eden Prairie, is a retired engineer.