North Dakota Police Request AR-15s–To Guard Schools

Today marks six months since the horrific Parkland massacre, in which a former student stormed Marjorie Stoneman Douglass High School with an AR-15 and killed 15 students and 2 teachers.

In the wake of Parkland, the ongoing gun debate in our country has reached a near fever pitch, as hysterical progressives try to argue in favor of restricting Second Amendment rights despite the fact that the Broward County Sheriff in Parkland were well aware of the shooter’s violent nature and had several opportunities to charge him with crimes that would have prevented him from being able to purchase the AR-15 or any other weapon.

The discussion of school safety has sadly taken a backseat to inflammatory rhetoric about the NRA and law-abiding gun owners, and the best argument the left can come up with against arming school guards that it would “make schools like prisons.”

In prisons, guards are armed to keep criminals from getting out. In a school, they’re armed to keep criminals from getting in.

Are our children not valuable enough to keep safe with the same weaponry we use to keep banks, politicians, or government buildings safe?

Well, North Dakotans apparently believe they are.

The Bismark Tribune reports:

Police in Bismarck, North Dakota, requested funding in the city’s 2019 budget for equipment that includes AR-15 rifles for school resource officers.

Bismarck Public Schools and the Bismarck Police Department plan to share the cost of purchasing nearly $26,000 worth of AR-15s, gun safes, additional bulletproof vests and medical kits, the Bismarck Tribune reported .

The district won’t fund the acquisition of firearms and the rifles will be locked up in the schools, according to district officials.

Police and school officials began considering rifles for school resource officers after a gunman in February killed 17 people at a school in Parkland, Florida, said Lt. Jason Stugelmeyer, who oversees the department’s Police Youth Bureau. The bureau includes six school resource officers.

The Bismarck officers currently carry handguns, which Stugelmeyer said won’t help if they need to shoot from a distance.

“I fully believe that we have some solid preventative measures in place, and generally our schools are safe,” he said. “But we have to do everything we can to be prepared for something if it did happen.”

It’s crazy to think some people think that it would somehow not work to arm school resource officers with rifles or even just handguns.

What are the odds a school is more likely to be shot up if there are trained, armed school resource officers vs if there…aren’t?