Two Wisconsin lawmakers, looking to stop school shooters before they have a chance to take more innocent lives, have introduced a bill that would allow teachers and staff members to carry firearms on school grounds.
State Representatives Scott Allen (R-Waukesha) and Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee) recently introduced a bill that would create an exception to the state’s prohibition on guns at schools. The proposal would instead allow school employees with concealed carry permits to possess a gun on school property, with the approval of the school board. Concealed carry license fees would be waived for teachers.
Gun control extremist Governor Tony Evers has already threatened to veto the bill.
“Wisconsinites have been desperately demanding commonsense proposals that will reduce gun violence and keep our kids, our schools, and our communities safe. This bill isn’t among them,” the Democrat tweeted.
Evers has vetoed a similar Republican bill. He insists “increasing firearms on school grounds won’t make our schools or our kids safer.”
I already vetoed Republicans’ bill to allow loaded guns on school grounds because increasing firearms on school grounds won’t make our schools or our kids safer.
So, let me be clear: I’ll veto any bill that weakens Wisconsin’s gun-free school zone law. Period.
— Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) April 10, 2023
But the latest deadly school shooting underscores what swift force meeting force can mean for saving lives.
Nashville police officers late last month quickly responded to an active shooter call at The Covenant School, a private Christian school. Audrey Hale, a 28-year-old woman who reportedly identified as a transgender male, shot and killed three nine-year-old children and three adults before she was “neutralized” by officers. Hale was shot dead about 14 minutes after the initial 911 came in.
Officials said the fast response by police officers Rex Engelbert and Michael Collazo saved untold innocent lives.
“Let us praise our first responders. Fourteen minutes, 14 minutes, I believe under fire, running to gunfire,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said.
Still, 14 minutes is an eternity in a school shooting.
“We’re trying to be more of a realist about the situation and say, ‘Let’s neutralize a threat as quickly as possible,” Allen told The Wisconsin Daily Star in an interview last week. “Minutes matter.”
The bill, Allen (pictured above, right) and Tomczyk (pictured above, left) said, offers another tool to harden targets, to protect schools and Wisconsin’s kids. School districts could choose whether arming teachers and staff is right for them.
“It gives the school district the opportunity to govern itself. If it wants to adopt a policy that allows certain people to carry on school property, they have that choice,” Tomczyk said. “We’re not forcing anyone to do anything … but it gets government out of the way of that school district.”
The lawmakers said they have been mulling legislation since last summer, responding to a request by the Germantown School District to allow concealed carry in Wisconsin schools and provide advanced defense and firearm training to school personnel. Following the school shootings in Uvalde, TX, the school district passed a safer schools resolution seeking changes in the law.
Allen said Evers’ fast rejection of the bill exposes the governor as a “partisan hack,” as “someone who is more committed to the issue than the solution.”
“They don’t want this issue to be resolved. The cynical part of me thinks they want to use the issue as a campaign tool,” Allen said. “It’s silly for him to say, ‘No way, no how, I’m not going to do it.’”
At the National Rifle Association annual meeting Friday, former Vice President Mike Pence called for funding to put resource/police officers in every school.
“We don’t need gun control. We need crime control,” he said, adding that Biden and his fellow “gun control extremists” need to give up their “pipe dreams of gun confiscation in this free society.”
As The Hill reported, South Dakota in 2013 became the first state to enact a law allowing school employees to carry guns. The legislation followed just a few months after the deadly Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, CT.
Since then, roughly 30 states have enacted similar legislation, according to data collected by the Giffords Law Center.
Only 16 states currently prohibit teachers from carrying a firearm: Alabama, California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, as well as the District of Columbia, according to The Hill.
“When it comes to protecting our kids we have to keep all options available because minutes matter, that’s the bottom line,” Allen reiterated.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Scott Allen” by Rep. Scott Allen. Photo “Cory Tomczyk” by Cory Tomczyk. Background Photo “Classroom” by 2y.kang.
