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WORLAND – Two local school districts are looking differently on new legislation regarding school personnel’s ability to carry firearms.

A law passed during the 2017 Wyoming State Legislature session that allows possession of firearms by school district employees went into effect July 1. The law co-sponsored by Rep. Nathan Winters (R- Thermopolis) and Rep. Mike Greear (R – Worland) was brought to the table to help schools in areas where law enforcement is too far away to reply in a timely manner.

Winters explained that a couple of superintendents of school districts in outlying areas where there is limited law enforcement or where law enforcement has to travel a distance to respond asked if there was a way that they could have some personnel at the school legally carry, with the proper training. “Who better to do that than a person that is familiar with the student body and familiar with the hallways and things like that who would be able to be protective in those situations. I think that if a school campus is defended, it will dissuade people that would do something foolish and in these outlying communities where they don’t have the opportunity to have a school resource officer or any armed presence on campus, they need the ability to defend themselves.” he said.

Ten Sleep Superintendent Jimmy Phelps stated, “Sheriff [Steve] Rakness informed us several years ago that in the event of an ‘active shooter,’ it could take them up to 20 minutes to get to our campus.  It would depend upon the location of the deputies at the time of the call.” He added, “Over the past several years, our district has done a lot of work to improve the security of our buildings and individual classrooms.  At a moment’s notice, we can now lock down the building, each classroom, restrooms, and make individual hallways inaccessible to an intruder.  At the same time, all individual key fob’s become inoperable, so that if an intruder took a key fob away from a person, that intruder could not use it to gain access to the building or classrooms. This new statute gives us the ability to take aggressive action against an intruder in our building, not just lockdown and hide.  Sheriff Rakness and the Washakie Sheriff’s Department do a great job, but because of our distance from law enforcement, we need the ability to take aggressive action.”

Worland Superintendent David Nicholas stated that he can understand the need for such a law for outlying school districts, but feels that the Worland schools, at this time, do not need armed personnel. “Our coverage is really good in Worland. We have worked with our police and sheriff departments, they make it a habit to walk through our schools daily unannounced and in addition to that we have a school resource officer that is at the high school and middle school. In addition to that just the response time from law enforcement to us is really quick. In Worland our coverage is good. Now I will tell you in Wyoming, there are some isolated schools and school districts that are a long ways from law enforcement. So if you are in Meeteetse or Ten Sleep or some of those schools that don’t have resident law enforcement, the guns in those schools it’s a different discussion. I’m not ever going to say never, I’m not opposed to that thinking but right now our coverage is such that I don’t think we have that need.”

The law

The summary of the law provided by the Legislation Service Office states: “This act authorizes a board of trustees of a school district to adopt rules, in consultation with local law enforcement, to allow school district employees who hold a valid concealed carry permit to carry a concealed firearm on school district property and in school district facilities.

“Promulgation of appropriate rules is required for an employee to be allowed to carry a concealed firearm and an employee must receive express approval of a school district to a carry a firearm on school district property or in a school district facility. The rules, if promulgated, must contain: an application, approval, and revocation process; require the employee to carry the firearm on his person or maintain the firearm in a concealed biometric container or lockbox; and establish initial and ongoing training requirements (which may be waived for rural schools).”

Senator Wyatt Agar (R-Thermopolis) explained in an earlier interview, “This is a complete local control issue. This bill is geared toward school districts such as Burlington or Meeteetse who do not have a school resource officer in the building.” He added that he had spoken with an administrator from Meeteetse school district and was told that the turnaround time, if an incident occurred; it would take law enforcement 45 minutes to arrive.

Necessity

Most people remember the days of not too long ago when high school students had their hunting rifles on gun racks in their vehicles and younger students brought their .22 rifles from Christmas and birthday gifts to show and tell with no need for such a law and ask themselves what happened.

“Over the past few years, over the past few decades I would imagine, there have been some people that would characterize guns as being the problem rather than the fact that there are bad people that would use something to harm others and so instead of blaming the foolishness and evil that’s bound in the heart of a human being, they blame the object, they blame the gun. As a result there have been some bad pieces of legislation passed across this country that would try to get in the way of a person’s opportunity to avail themselves of the Second Amendment. That tragedy of blaming a gun has led to a restriction in many cases of a people’s opportunity to defend themselves. In our current culture, sometimes we find that we need to figure out how we can help people defend themselves and avail themselves of their Second Amendment right to defend themselves,” Winters stated.

“There have been of course some nationwide school shootings, the tragic understanding is, almost all, I read that there was one college shooting that was not part of the norm, but most of the rest of them, most of those shootings happened in a quote unquote gun free zone. Even the theater shooting that happened in Colorado, that was a gun free zone. As a result of that the only person that was carrying a gun in those circumstances was the perpetrator of a crime and we cannot have a situation, where law abiding citizens are defenseless in the face of those that would break the law,” he added.