Colorado teachers to carry guns in classrooms next year amid gun violence concerns

School teachers in Hanover, Colorado will be allowed to start carrying guns in classrooms as early as next fall thanks to a new resolution, officials said Monday.

"In light of recent events nationally," the resolution read, referring to mass shootings, "any teacher or staff member with a permit to carry a concealed weapon can volunteer for extra duty as a security officer."

"It will take some time before we can identify teachers who will take on this role," Tambra Bernal, Hanover School District business manager, told Xinhua.

Bernal said the teachers who would be allowed to carry guns were required to take "police tactical training" in advance, and it would take months before guns would be permitted in classrooms.

"The training is very intense, and a lot needs to happen first before you'll see guns in the classrooms," she said.

Last week, this tiny rural school district, located southeast of Colorado's second-largest city Colorado Springs, joined a growing number of U.S. school districts in allowing school staff to carry guns.

According to School Board President Mark McPherson, the resolution, having won narrow approval by a 3-2 vote last week, was triggered by concerns over the school's remote location, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the nearest police station.

Hanover's resolution received favorable responses from most parents in a previous survey by the school, in a bid to promote students' security.

But the move was also met with dismay from gun-control advocates. "Guns do not make us safer," said Sandy Phillips, whose daughter was gunned down in a Colorado movie theater shooting in 2012, five months before the Sandy Hook tragedy.

The Aurora theater shooting taking place at a midnight Batman premiere in 2012 killed 12 and injured 70, after a 24-year-old gunman diagnosed with schizophrenia ambushed the theater east of Denver.

However, McPherson downplayed the timing of this resolution -- exactly four years after 20 children and 6 staff were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut by a 20-year-old gunman -- saying the measure had more to do with the school's geographic isolation and recent marijuana "cash-crop" industry, which had increased the risk of gun violence across the region.

Although the 2012 Colorado movie massacre triggered some mild gun control legislation, gun-control advocates said that with Donald Trump elected president, their campaign is "dead in the water."

The district, located in a conservative rural region that has heavily voted for Trump, has only one elementary school and one combined junior and senior high school with about 245 students, and a total of 30 more teachers and staff.

"Let's just pray some child doesn't get shot (in Hanover)," Phillips said.

Phillips, founder of "Jessi's Message," traveled around the country with her husband Lonnie to help grief-stricken families cope with the loss of their loved ones due to gun violence.

Their daughter Jessica Gawhi, 24 when killed, was an aspiring sports reporter before her life was cut short by a mentally ill man in Aurora, who admitted to a psychiatrist he had thoughts of killing people two months before he opened fire at the theater.

Phillips, a gun owner, has a simple message: more gun-control measures starting with better background checks. Such checks are seen as an effective way to identify psychotic killers and stop them from buying weapons.

Phillips told Xinhua that 34,000 Americans die each year from gun deaths, while the number in all European Union countries combined is only 6,700.

"The more guns, the more gun deaths; the more gun control, the fewer gun deaths ... it's pretty simple stuff," Phillips said. "It's too bad the gun industry is more interested in making money than saving lives."

Still, the managerial level of the Hanover School District thinks guns in classrooms are a good idea.

"We're not the only ones in American schools looking for ways to protect our children," Bernal said, referring to a handful of school districts in rural parts of Texas and California that had passed regulations permitting licensed and trained staff, including teachers, to carry guns.

"This is one option for better security, and it's not open to anyone at the school," Bernal added. "We'll see how many steps up to the plate to apply."

source: Xinhua