News Update: Arkansas School District Moves Ahead With Arming Teachers And Staff

Less than 24 hours ago, ARRA News Service reported that a recent Rasmussen Poll revealed that "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."

Then we shared an extract from an article by Robby Soave at The Daily Caller who addressed a situation in Arkansas where . . .

"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.
Today, Robby Soave has provided an update headlined -Arkansas school district will arm teachers, AG opinion be damned. He reported:

An Arkansas school district that was advised against arming its staff by the state attorney general has decided to let teachers carry guns anyway.

Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel recently issued an advisory opinion to Clarksville schools instructing them to abandon plans to let teachers and staff volunteer to carry weapons on school grounds. The teachers and staff had already completed a two-day gun training program that district administrators believed would ultimately make their schools safer in the event of a mass shooting.

Clarksville Superintendent David Hopkins initially interpreted McDaniel’s ruling to mean that the district could not deputize staff members. But after consulting with his own attorneys, Hopkins concluded that McDaniel’s opinion was neither correct nor binding.

Unless the Arkansas State Police shut down the program, Clarksville schools are set to allow teachers and staff to carry weapons when the fall semester begins on Aug. 19.

“We’re sitting on go,” Hopkins said in a statement.

Hopkins also criticized McDaniel’s conduct in the process.

“The only thing that’s detracting from this process is the attorney general’s erroneous opinion,” he said.

Clarksville administrators are still waiting for roughly one-third of the deputized staff members to receive their carry permits. If the state does not issue the rest of the permits, Clarksville will consider legal action, Hopkins said.It is indeed great news when citizens stand up to the bullying done by the likes of Democrat Attorney General Dustin McDaniel who has issued his numerous past non-binding opinions with the presumption that of course everyone would agree and do as he says.

Following his non-binding opinions began to change, when he failed to represent the people of Arkansas on several critical issues including defending Arkansans against the implementation of Obamacare. In addition, McDaniel has on previous occasions delayed the approval of ballot tiles for petitions by the people thus reduced the allotted time for collections of signatures thus dooming Arkansans being able to vote on critical issues.

By the 2012 elections, the people of Arkansas shifted politics in Arkansas by electing Republicans for the first time since the Civil War to control the Arkansas State Senate and House. And that new legislature passed new gun rights laws including the right for schools to arm their staff and teachers to protect their students from school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut last year.

Arkansas has previously suffered the painful experience of school shooting incidents:

In the early afternoon of March 24, 1998, two students from Westside Middle School, located approximately two miles west of Jonesboro (Craighead County), conducted an armed ambush on teachers and students, which resulted in five dead and ten others injured. The shooters, Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson, were arrested and prosecuted for the crime. The incident was one of two school shootings in Arkansas and one of several school shootings across the nation that adjusted school administrators’ and law enforcement officers’ concepts on school security and response plans to violent incidents at schools. . . .

The incident at Westside Middle School was not the first school shooting to occur in the state. On December 15, 1997, a fifteen-year-old student in Stamps (Lafayette County) conducted a similar ambush-style attack, firing upon students from a nearby wooded area. It is unknown whether Johnson or Golden had any knowledge of the details of this attack, but the similarity and timing is remarkable. The Westside School Shooting is also similar to the massacre at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, near Littleton, Colorado.

However, instead of qualifying and arming teachers or staff, the Arkansas liberal democratic controlled legislature retreated behind gun free zone signs and stripped everyone of their rights to protect themselves and the students even though the shooters may have been stopped if the teachers and or staff had been armed. The legislature at that time followed the liberal "Mary Poppins" neon sign idea that gun free zones signs would equate to no one  ever entering the schools with guns with the intent to harm or to kill the adults or the children. However, that same legislature  passed a law to charge teenagers as adults for school shootings. Neither actions focused on providing on-site protection to the faculty or students.  Thus children, teachers, and administrators have continued to be placed at risk.

Even though Clarksville School District is taking a stand to protect their students and faculty, many other school districts and the Arkansas University system have opted to ban faculty and faculty staff from having guns on their campus. Obviously, the liberal mindset is alive and well in the higher academic community influenced by liberal leadership of the Arkansas Department of Higher Education appointed by the Arkansas Democrat Governor Mike Beebe. Unfortunately, the abject stupidity of the "Gun Free Zones signs" goes beyond any "Here's Your Sign Jokes." After all, people can be seriously injured and killed because of policies behind these signs.

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Tags: Dustin McDaniel, Attorney General, Arkansas, non-binding opinions, Clarksville School District, arms teachers, staff, gun free zones, signs, prior school shootings To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!