NY Sheriffs Call for Armed Officers in All Schools
In the aftermath of last week’s deadly high school shooting in Florida, sheriffs in New York are stepping up efforts and calling on funding for at least one armed officer in all schools across the state.
“This will be an expensive undertaking, but we owe it to our children, and their parents, to provide a safe place for education to take place,” Wayne County Sheriff Barry Virts, the president of the New York State Sheriffs’ Association, said in a statement Thursday.
New York state has 4,750 public schools and about 2,000 private schools in grades K-12. The Sheriffs’ Association estimated that the cost of this proposal would equate to adding about one teacher to each of these schools.
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As the national conversation on gun control heats up following one of the deadliest school shootings in American history, its survivors have confronted lawmakers who they said were not serious in pushing any real reform to gun laws.
At a listening session on Wednesday, President Donald Trump listened to pleas from survivors and victims' families from Parkland and the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.
"We as a country failed our children," said Andrew Pollack, a father of one of the 17 victims from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Trump suggested solutions to prevent gun violence, such as arming teachers and school officials while ending gun-free zones, which he said offer a welcoming in to shooters.
"If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly," Trump said.
If schools could arm up to 20 percent of educators, Trump said its teachers would stop “maniacs.” On Thursday, he defended his statement and offered his support to the National Rifle Association (NRA).
In the wake of such tragedies, elected officials are weighing options for school safety. Kentucky's Republican governor and legislature are looking at a proposal that would allow armed teachers or staff on campus, while lawmakers from at least half a dozen states are considering similar measures.
But many education groups have joined together to block guns in schools and advocate for more school resource officers.
A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 62 percent of respondents said Trump is not doing enough to prevent mass shootings, while 77 percent said Congress was falling short on solutions.
Following the mass shooting in Las Vegas last fall, a bipartisan measure was introduced, banning the so-called "bump stocks," which give semi-automatic weapons the capability to be fired as if they were fully automatic. Under pressure, Trump moved to issue regulations, which had been stalled, to the Justice Department on Tuesday.