School Safety For America's Youngest Students Means More Officers, More Guns
Posted: 10/07/2013 7:30 am EDT | Updated: 10/07/2013 8:04 am EDT
ORLANDO, Fla. -- The same week protests erupted around the nation over the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, 800 school police officers attended a training conference on school violence in a nearby central Florida hotel.
The conference, organized by the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, gave these school officers lessons on safety, advocacy and warning signs in troubled teens. Attendees chose from a wide array of sessions and events, ranging from a gun safety presentation organized by the National Rifle Association to simulated laser-gun training. Defense vendors were there, too, hawking everything from non-lethal munitions to tourniquets to radio transmitters.
How do we keep our children safe from violence? It's a question the country has been asking itself over and over again in the past year, which has witnessed the horror at Sandy Hook Elementary and the fierce debates over Martin's death. For schools that educate even the youngest Americans, the answer, increasingly, is to arm up.
Vendors hawk training munitions to school resource officers.
Traditionally, school districts have paid for guards in middle and high schools. Because, as at Columbine in Colorado and Red Lake, an Indian
