School resource officers in Madison County, NC, will start the new academic year with semiautomatic rifles. Sheriff Buddy Harwood told the Asheville Citizen-Times that each of the six schools will have one AR-15 locked in a safe along with extra ammunition and breaching tools. Local law enforcement, education officials, and even most parents appear to be onboard – but not everyone looks forward to it.
AR-15 Rifles in School
In May, a lone gunman was able to kill 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX, and it took law enforcement more than an hour to stop him. A federal investigation into the police response raised new questions about the failure of both the officers and the initial school security measures, and there was plenty of blame to go around. “What is clear to most onlookers is that nothing went right,” Liberty Nation’s Sarah Cowgill later explained. “Those officers were in that building for so long, and the suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Harwood told reporters. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens.”
According to the sheriff, each of the six schools in his county – including three elementaries – will have a safe in an undisclosed location containing an AR-15 rifle, extra ammunition, and door-breaching equipment. Each campus also will have its own school resource officer (SRO), school safety liaison, and social workers and counselors. There will be a panic button system in every building that reports to a monitoring center and the sheriff’s office as well. Additional training for deputies and firefighters alike has been and will continue to be provided by firearm instructors at the local community college.
“Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be,” Harwood explained.
Hard Targets and Hurt Feelings
Dorothy Espelage, a school safety researcher and UNC-Chapel Hill professor in the School of Education, has spoken out against such heavily armed officers. “What’s going to happen is we’re going to have accidents with these guns,” she claimed. “Just the presence of an SRO increases violence in the schools. There’s more arrests of kids. Why is it that they have to have these AR-15s? It doesn’t make any sense.”
(Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
“The left has constantly argued against adopting more robust security measures in our schools, despite the fact that nearly all government buildings have armed security,” LN Socio-political Correspondent Jeff Charles wrote after the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting. Arguments like Espelage’s abound, as those opposed to hardening schools suggest it makes them more like prisons. Instead, they argue for less security in educational institutions and more gun control in general. And yet, as Charles pointed out in another article, the fortress-like schools of America’s inner cities don’t see mass shootings. The urban centers tend to have both much stricter gun regulations and higher rates of violent crime than their suburban and rural counterparts, so what makes the schools safer? They’re hardened targets and have been since the 1980s. Students in Chicago may be subject to pat-downs and bag checks every morning, but they’re a lot less likely to get shot in class.
Officers and education officials in Madison County believe this will make schools safer, despite Espelage’s concerns – and much of the community agrees. The safes, rifles, optics, and other gear were all bought with funds donated by local residents.
To see the sense in Harwood’s argument for officers armed with AR-15 rifles – regardless of how the presence of police may affect student behavior – one must simply answer one question: If a murderer stepped into the room to kill you, would you want to be outgunned?
