Provided the decision was made at a public meeting, local school boards in South Dakota can after July 1 give teachers in their schools permission to carry guns on school property, thanks to a new law signed last week by Gov Dennis Daugaard, the Associated Press reports.
The bill’s sponsor in South Dakota’s state House, Rep Scott Craig, said he had received many calls from school officials backing the bill in a state where rural school districts often don’t have enough money to hire full-time school resource officers. Passage of the bill seems to follow growing concerns that armed and mentally unstable people will enter schools and kill students.
However, many school board members, administrators, and teachers testified against the bill’s passage at a hearing in February, pointing out that it could make schools more dangerous and give people guns who were never trained how to handle them in emergency situations.
The new law doesn’t make it mandatory to arm teachers at any given school. Nor are teachers ever forced to carry guns. A growing push by the National Rifle Association, however, suggests that having more guns in schools is an answer to stopping school shootings.
President Obama and other government officials take an opposing stand, saying stricter controls on guns themselves or an improvement in mental hygiene services will prevent this type of violence in our schools.
Watch what happens in Texas
One of the biggest gun rights states in the union is Texas, where even several state legislators admit they carry concealed guns on a regular basis.
Hearings this week in Austin will bring adamant supporters on both sides of proposed state legislation that would allow concealed weapons in schools and in buildings on college campuses. The effort features more than a dozen bills moving through committees in the state legislature at this time.
One elementary school teacher who survived Charles Whitman’s shooting spree at the University of Texas Tower on Aug 1, 1966, which killed 17 and wounded 72, told the Austin American-Statesman she didn’t think more guns in schools would solve the problem of school shooting.
“We need to have a universal background check before someone can carry a concealed weapon,” the paper quoted her as saying. “We have to figure out a way to prevent shootings by not carrying more guns. That’s not the answer.”
But there’s a strong contingent who would disagree.
“If a shooting breaks out, it’s certainly better to have the possibility of people present who have a weapon and are trained to use it,” the American-Statesman quoted a retired Houston police officer who plans to testify for fewer limits on concealed weapons as saying. “Otherwise, you’ll just give the shooter time to claim more victims.”
Coming soon to a debate house near you …
