Training for Armed Security Guard

Dougan is between more than 20 teachers, administrators and other school employees in this town who will take obscured weapons during the school day, making use of an obscure Arkansas law that allows licensed, armed security guards on property. After undergoing 53 hours of training, Dougan and other teachers at the school will be measured guards.

“The chart we’ve been given in the history is ‘Well, lock your doors, turn off your lights and trust for the best,”’ Superintendent David Hopkins said. But as lethal incidents sustained to happen in schools, he explained, the district determined, “That’s not a chart.”

After the Connecticut assault, the design of arming schoolhouses against gunmen was hotly debated crossways the country. The National Rifle Association confirmed it the best answer to severe threats. But even in the most conventional states, nearly all proposals faltered in the face of confrontation from educators or warnings from indemnity companies that schools would face elevated premiums.

In powerfully traditional Arkansas, where gun possession is frequent and gun laws are permissive, no school region had ever used the law to arm teachers on the job, according to the state division of Education. The closest was the Lake Hamilton School District in Garland County, which for years has kept some guns locked up in case of crisis. Only a handful of trained administrators – not teachers – have admission to the weapons.

Clarksville, a society of 9,500 people about 125 miles northwest of Little Rock, is going additional.

Home to a yearly peach event, the town isn’t recognized for having hazardous schools. But Hopkins said he faced a deluge of calls from parents worried concerning security after the assault last year at Sandy Hook plain in Newtown, Conn.
Hopkins said he and additional school leaders didn’t see why the district couldn’t rely on its own employees and teachers to defend students rather than hire a famous person.

“We’re not tying our money up in a protector 24/7 that we won’t have to have except something happens. We’ve got these people who are previously hired and using them in other areas,” Hopkins said. “Confidently we’ll never have to use them as a safety protector.”

State officials are not blocking Clarksville’s preparation, but Arkansas Education Commissioner Tom Kimberly is opposite to the idea of arming teachers and staff. He prefers to hire law enforcement officers as school reserve officers.

There are other dissenters, too. Donna Morey, previous president of the Arkansas Education Connection, called the design of arming teachers “awful.” The risk of a student by accident getting shot or obtaining a gun outweighs any benefits, she said.

“We just think educators should be in the trade of educating students, not carrying a bludgeon,”