The National Rifle Association’s call Friday for armed officers in every school drew quick support from Georgia School Superintendent John Barge, who said it would deter the type of mass killings carried out last week at a Connecticut elementary school.
But Barge said financially struggling school districts in Georgia would need help from the state to pay for armed officers.
“Having a school resource officer would certainly be ideal,” Matt Cardoza, director of communications at the Georgia Department of Education, said Friday after a conversation with Barge. “It makes the school a safer place, but the state would have to pick up a significant part of that cost. Districts aren’t really in a position to pay for more than what they’re already struggling to pay for.”
Speaking publicly for the first time since 20 children were killed at their elementary school in Connecticut, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre called for armed officers in every school in the U.S.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” LaPierre said during a news conference in Washington.
He urged Congress to spend “whatever is necessary” to place armed officers in every school in the country.
While Barge embraced the NRA proposal, nationally it drew heavy criticism.
Many middle and high schools in Georgia already employ armed resource officers, and some districts, including the Fulton County School District and Atlanta Public Schools, have their own forces of resource officers.
While resource officers are not unusual at the middle and high school levels, they are rare at the elementary school level. And Georgia has more elementary schools than any other type of school.
There were 2,289 public schools in the 2011-2012 school year, according to a report from the Georgia Department of Education. More than half of them, 1,335, were elementary schools.
Placing armed officers in those schools could come with a hefty price tag — nearly $47 million per year if the officers earned an average annual salary of $35,000. Training and equipment could push that price higher.
Many school districts in Georgia have shortened their school year and expanded class sizes to cope with tight budgets.
John Monroe, vice president of GeorgiaCarry.org, a group that fights efforts to limit gun access, said having armed officers in schools could boost protection for schoolchildren. But he has cost concerns about LaPierre’s proposal.
“That sounds very expensive, so expensive I wonder if it’s feasible,” Monroe said.
Monroe said he would not dismiss the idea out of hand, but he added that a simpler solution could be to allow teachers and other school employees who are already licensed to carry firearms to carry them to school.
Such staff could serve as a sort of “unofficial” force to protect students, Monroe said.
LaPierre’s call drew a laugh from Alice Johnson, the executive director of Georgians for Gun Safety, who said it would not protect students.
“It hardly warrants a serious response or comment,” said Johnson, whose group works to reduce gun fatalities and injuries. “It’s just outrageous. It’s a terrible insult to people’s grief.”
Whether a school should have armed officers should be up to the parents in its community, said Donna Kosicki, the president of the Georgia PTA.
That, she said, is why the Georgia PTA backs having local school boards make that call. Parents could make their views known to their local school board representatives, and they would set policy that would have community support.
“Parents need to understand that they would have a voice,” Kosicki said.
The man who carried out the shooting rampage in Connecticut shot his way into the school, and it is not clear that a school resource officer would have prevented the killings.
Columbine High School near Denver, Colo., the scene of one of the most infamous school shootings in the nation’s history, employed a resource officer, but a pair of students there still managed to kill a dozen students and a teacher in 1999.
Virginia Tech has a police force on campus, but a gunman there still killed 32 people in 2007.
While adding armed resource officers to schools in Georgia could be expensive, state Rep. Edward Lindsey, R-Atlanta, said any price would be worth paying if it enhanced safety for children. He and Sen. Fran Millar, the Dunwoody Republican who is chairman of the Senate’s Education and Youth Committee, said citizens and policymakers need to step back, grieve for the dead in Connecticut and make sure that whatever policy is enacted is not driven by fear or anger.
“This, for me, is the time to mourn the innocent,” Lindsey said.
State Sen. Vincent Fort, D-Atlanta, said he believes the approach to gun safety needs to be “comprehensive,” including such things as examining care for the mentally ill, reinstituting a ban on assault weapons and limiting the size of ammunition clips.
He said he does not oppose exploring the idea of adding resource officers, but he said LaPierre and the NRA are being “irresponsible” by not embracing a broader approach.
About the Author
