Utah plans to place armed ‘guards’ in its elementary and secondary schools

To respond to the risk of shootings in schools, Utah, a western American state, is proposing the use of compulsory armed personnel in schools. This is one of several measures included in a mostly desired bill.

In 2023, nearly 350 shootings – not always fatal – will have taken place in the United States. Faced with this observation, the debate on weapons in schools is not new, either for security reasons or for constitutional questions. Here in Utah, the HB84 bill would require every school to have either a police officer or an armed security guard on site. This “guardian” could be an employee of the school, with the exception of teachers and the principal (except in small schools – less than 100 students, where teacher or principal could occupy this function).

The guard would undergo training twice a year, training compared by elected officials to that of a police officer. Therefore, not just any volunteer can become a guardian, they warn. Anyway, in this state, teachers who have a permit already have the right to have a weapon in the school. This law “don’t try to bring weapons into school. I assure you that the weapons are already there”proclaims the elected official who carried this project.

In addition to the guard, a “panic button”, cameras, armored windows…

The State is also proposing other measures. One of them echoes “Alyssa’s law”, already approved in Florida, Texas, New York State and Tennessee. This measure makes it possible to install in each classroom what is called a “panic button”, a button to signal danger, the intrusion of a shooter for example. We talk about Alyssa’s Law in reference to Alyssa Alhadeff, a 14-year-old girl killed in a devastating shooting in 2018 in Parkland, Florida. His mother, Lori Alhadeff, has since fought to have these buttons installed in every school in the country. The new bill also stipulates the presence of a video surveillance system or windows with special glass, more difficult to break. These and other measures cost money, but lawmakers have reportedly allocated $100 million.

Not everyone agrees. The educational community – the main teachers’ union in the country in any case – approves most of these measures but has expressed its doubts about the presence of an armed guard. Will he be properly trained in interactions with students, beyond the intrusion of a shooter?

Two elected Democrats from Utah, a representative and a senator, start from the principle that the presence of firearms in an establishment is never a good idea. According to them, schools resemble prisons. Knowing that the issue of gun violence goes beyond schools, it would be better, according to them, to understand this problem more broadly, which affects all of American society. They think that solving this problem involves limiting access to weapons, a recurring debate in the United States. But it should be noted that these two elected officials, critics of part of the bill, are largely in the minority.