School is set to open Thursday for 200 Utah teachers who will get special firearms training -- working with a plastic gun in a conference room in a hockey arena -- to carry concealed weapons in their classrooms.
Since the Dec. 14 massacre of 20 children and six staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and the National Rifle Association news conference touting arming teachers for school security, such classes are drawing fresh attention.
In Ohio, the Buckeye Shooting Foundation is swamped with 20 times more applications -- from teachers and administrators to custodians and bus drivers -- than they have space for in a three-day tactical defense course to be offered this this spring.
Jim Irvine, president of the Ohio foundation, said Thursday that the $1,000 per person Armed Teacher Training Program would be free for the 24 people selected from more than 400 applicants. "What better use for an educational foundation than to help educators protect our children," he said.
It is legal in Ohio to bring a concealed weapon on school grounds if a school district has granted permission. Irvine expects more will do so since the Sandy Hook killings.
"School boards were just in denial. That denial got ripped away in Newtown, Conn. The idea is to make it hard to kill a kid," he said.
The school personnel chosen for the class must already have basic firearms training and a concealed carry permit and come to the Tactical Defense Institute in rural West Union, Ohio, with their own handgun, holster, extra magazines and speed loaders.
The idea that someone on a school staff may be armed would work as a deterrent, just as training and arming airline pilots has improved air safety, said Irvine, who is an airline pilot.
In Utah, gun instructor Clark Aposhian told the Associated Press, "We're not suggesting that teachers roam the halls" for an armed intruder. "They should lock down the classroom. But a gun is one more option if the shooter" breaks into a classroom, he said.
He is chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council, the state's leading gun lobby, which is waiving its $50 fee for the training. The instruction, featuring plastic guns was to start Thursday afternoon in a conference room at Maverick Center, a hockey arena in the Salt Lake City suburb of West Valley.
Utah is among the few states that let people carry licensed concealed weapons into public schools without exception, the National Conference of State Legislatures reported in a 2012 compendium of state gun laws.
Parents of schoolchildren will not know which teachers are armed. By law, Utah gun permit records are closed to the public. In Arizona, where gun permit records are also closed, Attorney General Tom Horne has proposed amending state law to allow one educator in each school to carry a gun.
Earlier this week, The Journal News in Westchester, N.Y., a state where records are public, ignited a furor by publishing an online database mapping -- by name and address -- every person with a handgun permit in three counties north of New York City.
The National Rifle Association blasted the newspaper's action as "irresponsible and dangerous."
Arming teachers is dangerous, Carol Lear, a chief lawyer for the Utah Office of Education, told the Associated Press. She argues teachers could be overpowered for their guns or misfire or cause an accidental shooting.
"It's a horrible, terrible, no-good, rotten idea," Lear said.
No comments:
Post a Comment