62% Would Feel Safer If Their Child Attended A School With An Armed Guard

Armed Teacher Responding to Threat

Rasmussen Reports: Arkansas’ state attorney general [Dustin McDaniel] last week limited the ability of local school districts to have armed guards. But most Americans with school-age children continue to say they would feel safer if their child attended a school with an armed guard and think the decision to put armed guards in the schools should be made by local government officials.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 62% of Americans with children of elementary or secondary school age would feel safer if their child attended a school with an armed security guard. Just 24% say they would feel safer if their child went to a school where no adults were allowed to own a gun. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure. . . . [Read More]

Robby Soave at The Daily Caller reported on the McDaniel's decision:
An attorney for the state of Arkansas advised a school district against implementing a plan to arm its teachers with guns — drawing the ire of gun rights supporters.

The Clarksville School District planned to let teachers carry guns in school starting in the fall. Administrators even hosted a two-day training session for staff members who planned to act as unofficial security guards for the schools.

School Superintendent David Hopkins said the plan was a response to the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last year. “We lock the door, and we hide and hope for the best,” he said in a statement. “Well that’s not a plan.”

But Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wants to kill the idea. “Simply put, the code in my opinion does not authorize either licensing a school district as a guard company or classifying it as a private business authorized to employ its own teachers as armed guards,” he wrote in a statement.

McDaniel’s opinion isn’t binding, however — something proponents of gun rights were quick to point out.

“I think the Attorney General’s opinion (which isn’t legally binding, by the way) is a well-timed political ploy meant to distract from his party’s candidate for governor, former [Democratic] Rep. Mike Ross, who made anti-gun comments after the Sandy Hook tragedy,” wrote Nicholas Stehle, a member of the board of Arkansas Carry, in an email to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The legislature previously passed a law allowing local government entities to deputize individuals. Under this law, schools are allowed to arm teachers who volunteer for the responsibility, wrote Stehle. “Ultimately, the Attorney General is probably wrong,” he wrote. . . . [Read More]

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