Georgia State Senate Republicans plan to introduce legislation during the upcoming General Assembly session that would give school districts funding to train teachers to carry guns in their classrooms.
State law already allows campus officials to carry firearms so long as they are Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council (POST) certified; however, the decision of whether to allow teachers to be armed on campus is left up to the individual school school boards, according to District 23 State Sen. Max Burns.
“School boards have home rule, meaning they make the final decision. What this bill does is provide the funding for teachers to become and remain certified,” Burns said.
The plan, which was put forward by Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, is for the state to pay teachers an extra $10,000, in the form of a stipend, a year if they volunteer to undergo the necessary firearms training so they can be armed in their classrooms.
“The stipend is for the initial training and also the annual refreshments of that certification,” Burns said.
District 131 State Rep. Jodi Lott says that she supports the overall idea of arming teachers, provided if individual school systems ensure the program is implemented safely.
“School systems already try to recruit military retirees, and these would be the perfect candidates because they have been trained to handle weapons in crisis situations; but, I believe they need to be required to attend ongoing training since it is not like riding a bike,” Lott said.
Lott says that the media focuses intently on mass shootings but rarely spends more than just a few sentences describing situations where people’s lives were saved by a “good guy with a gun.”
However, not everyone is sold on allowing teachers to carry live ammunition in the classroom. Richmond County School Board Trustee Venus Cain says she is totally against the proposition.
“I don’t think it is a very bright idea. Some people might seem stable, but there may be issues no one knows about. I think we need less guns, not more,” Cain said.
Cain says she also fears a scenario where an unruly student could manage to wrestle a firearm away from a teacher by catching them off guard.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, from 2000 to 2021, there were 276 casualties (108 killed and 168 wounded) in active shooter incidents at elementary and secondary schools and 157 casualties (75 killed and 82 wounded) in active shooter incidents at post-secondary institutions across the nation.
The General Assembly, in its last session, approved a measure put forth by Gov. Brian Kemp requiring all public schools in Georgia to conduct active-shooter drills by Oct. 1 of each school year.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter and Editorial Page Editor for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
