PHOENIX — Saying it will protect students from “maniacal, homicidal” killers, a House panel voted Wednesday to let schools designate one employee at each site to have access to a gun.
Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills, said HB 2412 would not permit that person to carry a gun all day. Instead, the gun would have to be locked up, with the designated person having a key. That person would be required to have 24 hours of firearms training and undergo a background check.
Attorney General Tom Horne told members of the House Appropriations Committee he came up with the idea in the wake of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that claimed 26 lives. He rejected calls by some to allow all teachers to arm themselves.
His concern with that, he said, is what if a teacher misplaced a gun on campus?
He said that, as a former board member in the Paradise Valley Unified School District, he knew of situations in which teachers lost keys. That created its own problems with having to rekey the building.
“If somebody lost a gun, that would be pretty bad,” he said.
“But on the other hand, doing nothing also is dangerous,” Horne said. “If some maniac gets into a school and there’s no one there with a gun, he can do a lot of damage.”
He said the principal at Sandy Hook tried to stop the killer with her bare hands. “He killed her,” Horne said. “If she had had a gun, it might have been a different story.”
Horne said having a single trained person in each school, and leaving the selection of that person to local school boards, seemed a satisfactory compromise.
The measure drew questions from Rep. Stefanie Mach, D-Tucson, ranging from the cost of liability insurance to the possibility that a student could take the key from a teacher and gain access to the gun. Mach said she believes in “an unassailable truth that more weapons equal more violence.”
But proponents, all Republicans, pushed the measure through the committee, setting the stage for a vote by the full House.
At the heart of the question is what, if anything, Arizona lawmakers should do to keep students safer.
Horne said that if money were no object, the state would put a “school resource officer” in every school, a police officer stationed there not only to protect students but also help out with other safety issues. But Kavanagh said the $300 million price tag is not feasible.
Horne said that leaves it to schools to figure out how best to handle the situation.
The measure drew criticism from the Arizona School Boards Association. But lobbyist Janice Palmer said the group would be willing to go along with a program if it were limited to rural schools where police response might be delayed.
Kavanagh scoffed at that suggestion.
“When a wild gunman is chasing your kids, how many minutes do you allow him to have free access to the child?” he asked. Horne echoed the theme, saying that having a police station “even a block away” is no guarantee of a prompt response.
Kavanagh said the proposal is far from unique.
He said Hawaii, New Hampshire and Utah all allow anyone with a permit to carry a concealed firearm to bring it onto school grounds. And he said several other states, including Louisiana and Texas, allow teachers, with permission of school officials, to bring their own guns.
“This is not some groundbreaking thing that Arizona is doing,” Kavanagh said.
He said a comparison with other states shows “Arizona is well behind the curve in protecting children in situations where maniacal, homicidal armed and dangerous people walk into schools and shoot the schools up.”
