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GRAND SALINE, Texas – The Grand Saline Independent School District in Texas is authorizing trained staff members to carry firearms to protect students under the “Guardian Plan,” which the state rolled out several years ago and the district deployed in February.
The small school district is located approximately one hour east of Dallas. They have an enrollment of about 1,200 students. Superintendent Micah Lewis told the New York Post, “Every time there was a school shooting, me and the board talked about it again. If some crazy came in here, could we minimize the damage by being armed?”
He added, “We’re educators. I hate that we have to do that, but again, you weigh it out. Do you take this student down if he’s mowing people down? It’s an easy answer. You take one to save many.”
The superintendent said they approved the “Guardian Plan” with support from the community.
“I figured that in the community of Grand Saline we would have support. There’s going to be a few people that question, why would you want to do that? We just weighed out, do we think that our kids are more safe or less safe if we do this, and we feel like our kids would be more safe if we enacted the Guardian Plan,” Lewis told CBS 19.
Branda Hellums, a local resident, said it’s currently become necessary to keep children safe.
“I think that handguns in schools are something that’s necessary these days,” Hellums said. “People go crazy. They bring guns in school and start killing people. I mean there’s been too much of it going on.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law in 2019 that allows an unlimited number of teachers to become armed marshals in school as long as they complete the training, National Review reported.
Teachers who wish to participate in Texas’s school armed marshal program, which was implemented after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 must undergo active shooter drills as well as 80 hours of training. School marshals must keep their weapons locked up and away from students unless their main job does not involve “regular, direct contact with students,” in which case they are allowed to carry a concealed firearm.
Lewis said they do not disclose which staff members are armed.
“It could be anyone, it could be any employee of the district. And we don’t divulge who that is, of course, we don’t divulge where they are. We don’t divulge how many are on each campus or in each building. But it could be any employee in the district,” he said.
However, district employees who want to be armed must have a license to carry — not overly burdensome for good citizens in Texas — and apply for the program, according to the superintendent. Once accepted, the staff member will be further screened and subsequently trained by the Texas Department of Public Safety, Daily Wire reported.
“The guardian keeps possession of the firearm at all times and the weapons are not stored on campus,” the New York Post noted.
It’s a different world than decades past. As a result, new measures are being taken in ways that previously seemed unthinkable.
“One of the guardians said to me, ‘Can you believe that we’re to this point? When I went into education 30 years ago, I never thought this would happen,’” Lewis said, concluding, “Ninety-five percent of people here support this. The only people who have not supported it are outsiders.”
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Source: www.lawofficer.com