A bill permitting Indiana teachers to receive voluntary firearms training is moving forward after it cleared a Senate committee Wednesday by a 10-3 party line vote.
A Democratic amendment requiring schools to notify parents, if there’s a gun in their child’s classroom, failed by a 6-5 margin. Sen. Dan Dernulc, R-Highland, opposed the amendment for parental notification.
The bill, authored by State Rep. Jim Lucas, R-Seymour, allows for traditional, charter and non-public schools to apply for grant money from the state Secured School Safety Grant program to provide the optional training.
The bill, which has already passed the House, was forwarded to the Senate appropriations committee since it relies on state money.
Since 2013, Indiana school districts have had the authority to arm teachers and other staffers.
GlenEva Dunham, president of the Gary Teachers Union and the Indiana American Federation of Teachers, said only two school districts have approved the arming of teachers and staff.
Jay County School Corp., a rural district south of Fort Wayne, was the first following the 2018 mass shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school that killed 17 people.
Nearly 50 employees volunteered. The district purchased $75,000 worth of guns, safes, and tactical vests. Each school has a hidden handgun locked in a safe that a team of certain trained teachers and staff can access.
After a gunman with an assault rifle murdered 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 others last year in Uvalde, Texas, the Shelby Eastern Schools, southeast of Indianapolis, began a similar gun access plan for teachers and staff.
“I’m looking at this as a deterrent factor,” said Lucas who said he’s studied school shootings in Nashville, Tennessee, Newtown, Connecticut, Parkland, and Uvalde.
Lucas said the firearms training would be similar to that of a police officer.
“It’s a standard curriculum to come up with a simple program to not turn our teachers into SWAT teams, but to defend themselves and students in a last ditch scenario,” said Lucas.
The killers in the schools referenced by Lucas all had powerful assault rifles. The type of weapon allowed by a teacher in a classroom wasn’t specified in the bill.
The training is also open to school employees. It would cover marksmanship, the safe handling, storage, and maintenance of firearms along with situational shooting in high stress environments.
Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, asked Lucas what his solution was “to people going around shooting people.”
Lucas dismissed gun restrictions as part of the problem.
“There is no solution… the Sandy Hook shooter shot his mom and took the weapon,” he said of the 2012 school massacre.
Qaddoura disagreed.
“Next is arming kids, you’re trying to solve the problem by asking teachers to be engaged in active shooter drills in classrooms and be terrorized,” he said.
Dernulc said he supported the bill because the training is voluntary.
“This is an emotional issue for sure,” he said…. “I just feel this might not be the end-all solution, but it’s a start,” he said.
Dunham said she’s seen little interest from teachers in having a gun.
“When you go into schools, people aren’t talking about arming themselves. Only legislators are talking about it,” said Dunham.
“That’s just Jim Lucas doing something Jim Lucas wants to do, he’s a gun totin’ guy,” she said.
Carole Carlson is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
