A school board in Indiana this week voted to bar school resource officers (SROs) from carrying guns, the first such rule in the state.
The Monroe County Community School Corporation’s Board of Trustees made the decision after two members delivered monologues against guns, including one who falsely claimed that no school resource officer in the U.S. has ever stopped a shooting by discharging his or her weapon.
“There has been no instance where an SRO prevented a school shooting with the discharge of a weapon,” Jacinda Townsend Gides told a meeting, citing the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review.
A search by The Epoch Times found at least three times a school resource officer shot their weapon to stop a student who was armed.
“I think that really goes into my decision, as well, that statistically speaking, however the SROs are functioning, weapons are not an essential part of that,” Gides alleged.
Gides also said she supported disarming officers because seeing the officers with guns in the school “causes quite a bit of fear in me.”
“I can’t imagine how much fear that might cause for a teenager to know that sort of thing present in a situation,” she added.
April Hennessey, another board member, opened by acknowledging that the topic was complex.
“I’m not naïve, necessarily. And perhaps even I understand somewhat thoroughly how it feels to walk into a school building and have some fear, especially on the heels of some of the events that we’ve seen. But I also think that we have a commitment to make to all of our students and adults in the building not to frontload our schools with fear,” she said.
“And I do think that for many people guns signal or signify that we have something to be afraid of. And I think for many of our students who have grown up in unsafe home environments or in complicated relationships with law enforcement, that in and of itself can be triggering,” she added.
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