Educators could volunteer to carry firearms in school under bill headed to House vote

James McJunkin is a retired intensive care pediatrician who has been concerned about gun injuries to children after treating a 3-year-old who was shot through the spinal cord by his 7-year-old brother. The young victim was paralyzed from the neck down, depended on a ventilator and died four years after the accidental shooting.

“I was very impressed that unintentional injuries can be extremely hazardous and, in the sense where we’re thinking about introducing guns into the schools, I’m very concerned about the potential for these unintentional injuries that can be grave and totally life changing and should be totally preventable,” McJunkin said in the hallway outside a legislative committee room last week.

“I think people underestimate the potential for unintentional injuries.”

He is alarmed about House Bill 4299, which would apply to teachers, administrators, support personnel in elementary or secondary schools who volunteer to be designated as school resource officers. They would be authorized to carry concealed firearms or a stun gun or Taser.

Any educator seeking the designation would need to provide proof of a valid conceal carry permit and a certificate demonstrating completion of a Security Protection Officer Training program. The training would need to include mitigation techniques, neutralization of potential threats and active shooters, de-escalation techniques, crisis intervention and more.

The bill has advanced through both the House education and judiciary committees and is now on the House floor. It could be up for passage in the House as soon as Tuesday.

McJunkin was called up to testify at committee, where the room was packed with people wearing red Moms Demand Action tshirts, reflecting an organization advocating for public safety measures intended to protect people from gun violence. They oppose the bill.

McJunkin has been advocating for preventive safety measures such as improving school entrances and exits, teaching suspicious activity reporting, threat assessment and safe storage at home.

House Bill 4521 would remove sales tax on guns and on some firearm safety devices, but it’s gone nowhere so far. House Bill 4338, the School Access Safety Act, is meant to push for better design standards for school entrances and exits to prevent unauthorized persons from bringing firearms and dangerous weapons and materials into a school. That bill has also gone nowhere.

“When we focus on prevention,” McJunkin said, “we then don’t need to take the reactive approach of using guns.”

Advocates for the bill that would allow some educators to be armed have expressed their own alarm about the mass shootings in schools across the United States. They contend having armed personnel in schools would provide a greater chance in fighting back against an intruder.

The proponents of House Bill 4229 have noted that some counties do not have school resource officers, positions usually held by current or retired police officers. Some counties might have only one school resource officer shared among the schools.

“We all know that not all of our schools have those resource officers because there’s not enough funding for them,” said Delegate Doug Smith, R-Mercer, the lead sponsor of HB 4229. “In some of our rural communities, it’s not feasible to have that resource officer at an elementary school out in the middle of nowhere. It’s just not going to happen; otherwise we would have it already.

“So this is an additional tool that would allow where we don’t have those security personnel, to allow the teachers so there’s some security for our children out there.”

Smith noted the program is voluntary and includes a training period of about 24 hours with local law enforcement.

“We need to look at all options to address these school shootings,” Smith said, “and some of those options are adding more security at schools, hardening our schools, addressing the mental health problems, and there’s no single solution out there of what we can do to protect our kids.”

The tragedy of school shootings can grow worse for every moment it takes to mount a response, Smith said on MetroNews’ “Talkline,”

“In the time it takes for somebody to realize what’s going on and then making that phone call to 911 and then for the law enforcement to respond, the shooter has already done the most damage before they can even get there,” he said.

“So allowing a teacher, who is trained and volunteers to do this program because they care about what’s going on with the kids — we have somebody there at the beginning of what’s happening and can possibly mitigate the shooter from killing 10 people.”

One of the people watching as the bill was discussed inside the House Judiciary room last week was Sarah Gottlieb, a school nurse for the past two decades. She is concerned about unintended consequences like the possibility of a student grabbing a firearm from a teacher.

“A lot of our students are tall, they’re strong and they can be quite emotional. Some are quite mature, some can be very emotional,” Gottlieb said.

“So it worries me that they get upset about something; they might catch a teacher by surprise and relieve them of their gun. Then you have a horrible situation where you have an armed student who is upset and not thinking straight and doesn’t have good long-term thinking skills developed yet. I think that has to be a consideration when a teacher has so many other responsibilities besides armed protection.”