Paula Aboud is a Democratic state senator representing Tucson. She sits on the Senate's Higher Education Committee.

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Opinion by Paula Aboud

The conversation about guns in schools will continue this week as legislation is being voted on at the Capitol. This issue has struck deep chords within our community.

As a state legislator, I have seen two distinct opinions about this issue. One side of the guns-in-schools argument is that a gun owner wants no one to be defenseless in the face of a crazed gunman. The other side says that bringing guns into schools creates problems rather than solves them.

A newspaper poll recently suggested that our community was split on concealed weapons in schools. Wanting a clearer answer, I conducted my own poll. I spoke to clerks in stores, teachers, parents and a university president. Not one person believed that guns belonged in schools.

In speaking with University of Arizona President Robert Shelton, he said he shared the opinion of the campus police: If students or teachers are armed, a campus becomes far more dangerous. Campus security responds to an emergency call within two minutes, supporting their contention that there is little to gain and much to lose from an armed student body.

At Teachers Lobby Day at the Legislature last week, I furthered the discussion by bringing together three teachers from the Tucson Unified School District to meet with the author of the "guns in schools" legislation, Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa.

The two sides offered their best arguments to try to persuade the other, yet, in the end, neither side changed its position. But I was changed.

I was moved by the lack of fear that teachers have in their schools. They said their classrooms have locking systems that enable doors to lock from the inside. Additionally, most shootings and deaths occur in libraries and open spaces where there are no locks on doors to stop intruders. And lastly, they indicated that most schools have trained security personnel on their campuses to handle most crises.

In contrast, the teachers' fears about what schools would look and feel like if guns were in teachers' hands was palpable. They spoke of how easy it is to steal a purse or break into a locker, especially when the purpose is to steal a gun; and they stated how easy it would be to turn a teacher's gun back on him or her.

The recommendations made by these three teachers in the debate with Sen. Johnson offered safer ways to improve school safety without bringing guns onto campus: Increase and improve door locks on classrooms, increase security personnel, and reduce class sizes and hire more counselors to better identify the at-risk students.

The teachers, parents, community members and administrators who conversed with me are in agreement that bringing guns into schools would cause far greater problems than the random gunman brings. And we are in agreement that this legislation is a mistake.

However, this legislation can be a wake-up call to our community to call your legislators and urge them to vote no on guns in schools.

It is up to the community, not state legislators, to make such critical decisions for their schools. Teachers and administrators are on the front line of our guns-in-schools debate, and they, in conjunction with parents, should be making important suggestions to improve school safety.