A bill that would allow teachers and other staff in schools to be armed in the hopes of deterring school shootings drew dozens of people and some emotional testimony to the Nebraska Legislature’s Education Committee on Tuesday.
State Sen. Tom Brewer’s bill is among the latest in GOP-led state legislatures across the country embracing bills expanding gun rights.
The Nebraska bill is made up of three parts. It would give local school boards the ability to allow off-duty law enforcement to carry guns onto school property and create detailed maps of schools’ buildings and grounds to give to local law enforcement and first responders to use in the event of a school shooting.
It would also allow for teachers or other school staff to be armed, as long as they undertook gun handling and safety training.
The bill is needed in Nebraska’s rural districts, Brewer said, where schools can be many miles away from the nearest law enforcement and rarely have access to resource officers that are prevalent in cities like Omaha and Lincoln.