A small Texas school district about 150 miles northwest from the Dallas-Fort Worth area has taken a proactive step toward school security by adopting a regulation that allows teachers and other staff who are licensed to carry concealed handguns to pack their pistols on the job.
According to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the 110-student Harrold School District, in far northwest Wibarger County surprised Texas school officials. The newspaper quoted Barbara Williams, spokeswoman for the Texas Association of School Boards, noting that this was the only school district in the Lone Star State where such a rule had been adopted.
While the move may be disdained by anti-gunners and school security experts, it got the favorable attention of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb quickly issued a statement to the press supporting the school board and Supt. David Thweatt.
“Critics of the plan,” Gottlieb predicted, “will argue about liability, or suggest that the school could have hired a security officer or off-duty policeman. But we all know that such officers can’t be everywhere, and in an emergency, every second counts.”
Under the plan, school district employees wanting to carry on campus must have a valid concealed carry permit, and they also have to get crisis management training. They will also be required to use ammunition designed for low-ricochet potential as it will be used inside a school building if an emergency arises.
Thweatt told The Star-Telegram, “When the federal government started making schools gun-free zones, that’s when all of these shootings started.”
Gottlieb, co-author of the best-selling America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, agreed with that assessment. When he did that book—with Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman—Gottlieb said an entire chapter was devoted to the “folly of gun-free zones.” He said such places are magnets for cowardly mass killers who have nothing to fear because the victims cannot fight back.
“Gun control extremists despise this kind of common-sense approach to the potential of school violence,” he said.
Gottlieb believes the “time has come to challenge the head-in-the-sand philosophy” of gun control extremists who championed gun-free zone laws a decade ago.
“How many lives have been lost on public school and college campuses because of these insane victim disarmament measures,” he questioned. “How many students and teachers might be alive today if only lawmakers and school officials had acted as responsibly as the Harrold administration?”
The district’s only school facility is located just off US 287, a heavily-used highway that might give a crazed gunman easy access to the campus. The sheriff’s department is some distance away.
There are other security measures in place, but Gottlieb considers adding the layer of armed teachers and staff to be “a last line of defense” against an emergency.