One school district in North Carolina will now have emergency safes for AR-15s in every school as added security in the wake of the Uvalde school massacre, the Asheville Citizen-Times reports.
Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood said they were able to put an AR-15 rifle and safes in all six schools in the district. Breaching tools, extra magazines and ammo were also placed in the safes.
“The reason we put the breaching tools in the safes is that in the event we have someone barricaded in a door, we won’t have to wait on the fire department to get there,” he said.
Harwood said he wants his officers to be prepared in case there’s a school shooting, to avoid a repeat of officers’ botched response to the Uvalde school shooting in Texas earlier this year.
“Those officers were in that building for so long, and that suspect was able to infiltrate that building and injure and kill so many kids,” Harwood said. “I just want to make sure my deputies are prepared in the event that happens.”
“We’ll have those tools to be able to breach that door if needed. I do not want to have to run back out to the car to grab an AR, because that’s time lost. Hopefully we’ll never need it, but I want my guys to be as prepared as prepared can be,” he added.
Madison County Schools Superintendent Will Hoffman said district officials have been in regular contact with the police department about ways to beef up security ahead of the start of the new school year.
“Our partnership with law enforcement is a critical part of our daily preparations. We have to be vigilant and prepared for any possibility at any time. Our students have to feel safe in order to be safe,” Hoffman said.
But, gun safety experts are appalled by the idea and called on district officials to advocate for meaningful gun reform instead of bringing guns into schools.
Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy at the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told USA Today that this response to school shootings is “horrific,” because “where there are more guns, there is more gun violence.”
“Those are the real risks that guns pose to students on a daily basis,” she said. “If they want to make their students safer, they should be advocating for the solutions that we know work, like expanded background checks, extreme-risk protection order laws, waiting periods, safe storage, etc.”
Andy Pelosi, co-founder and executive director of the Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus, told the outlet that having AR-15s in school will not make much of a difference.
“We saw the firepower that responding law enforcement had in Uvalde, and they still didn’t breach the door for over an hour,” Pelosi said.
“Part of this discussion has to be, ‘where are the young people doing these acts getting their weapons?”’ he added. “We should be banning military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
Harwood acknowledged that the optics of having AR-15s in schools may be discomforting to some, but he believes it is necessary.
“I hate that we’ve come to a place in our nation where I’ve got to put a safe in our schools, and lock that safe up for my deputies to be able to acquire an AR-15,” he said. “But, we can shut it off and say it won’t happen in Madison County, but we never know. I want the parents of Madison County to know we’re going to take every measure necessary to ensure our kids are safe in this school system. If my parents, as a whole, want me to stand at that door with that AR strapped around that officer’s neck, then I’m going to do whatever my parents want as a whole to keep our kids safe.”
