The discussion of guns in schools shifted from arming teachers to arming more school resources officers.
A bill to arm teachers passed through the Civil Justice Subcommittee, Wednesday, despite opposition from law enforcement, teachers and the governor's office. State democrats said that bill would be harmful for Tennessee students and the state should be focusing on allocating funds so all public schools have an SRO.
"The reason why we're having these mass shootings is because of the access to these weapons of war and the people that have access to them," said representative Antonio Parkinson.
Democratic lawmakers pointed to comments made by the bill's sponsor, representative David Byrd, who said he would support another bill that would post two off duty police officers at any schools that wanted to participate.
"The best option is SROs," said representative G.A. Hardaway. "[Byrd] knows that. His problem is that the administration keeps lying to him and will not give him and the other distressed counties the funding to put the best option in place."
However, republicans said it's not just more SROs that are needed. Teachers could be a second line of defense in the instance of a mass shooting if the resource officers are nowhere to be found.
"I think we've proven in Florida, with a half a billion dollars they're talking about spending, you're still not going to be able to make them hard zones like you would a courthouse," said representative Ryan Williams.
Governor Bill Haslam announced Thursday his office was creating a task force to address issues of school safety. He said he believes adding funding for SROs could help, but the issue is deeper than that.
"So, we're going to look at everything from school entry and exit, what are the ways to do that? One of the things you want to do is control the entry ways to school so we can funnel the folks coming into schools. The downside of that is you have to make certain you have an exit in case there's a fire or something," said Haslam.
