Opinion

Students face off on LB 1339

Shelby Neeley, Chase Zagurski • Mar 24, 2024

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Writers Chase Zagurski and Shelby Neeley go toe to to on LB 1339.

Bill Preface

Nebraska Legislative Bill 1339 introduced this session in the Nebraska State Legislature would change the law allowing schools to establish armed security programs with authorized personnel carrying concealed firearms:

“A school board or other governing body of a school may authorize the carrying of firearms by authorized security personnel in a school, on school grounds, in a school-owned vehicle, or at a school-sponsored activity or athletic event by adopting a written policy governing such conduct. Such written policy shall, at a minimum, include requirements for personnel qualifications, training, appropriate firearms and ammunition, and appropriate use of force.”

The bill also sets up schemes by which schools can collect emergency mapping data and provide it to public safety agencies like police and fire departments, while also providing grant funding for schools to purchase and integrate systems capable of collecting such mapping data.

The bill has recently advanced in the legislature under the provision of existing only for areas of under 5,000 people.

The bill can be read here.

Shelby Neeley

Let’s not put more guns in schools

I understand why this bill was proposed– rural schools in Nebraska are far from policed areas, and it could take far too long for police to get to said schools in time, so the idea of just giving a security officer or teacher a gun is a reasonable conclusion to reach– but I have a feeling it would be disastrous in practice.

A main issue I have with the proposed bill is the lack of safety guidelines for storing said guns. There’s plenty of guidelines for getting them in, including length, type, certifications of owner, etc- but once they’re actually authorized to be inside the schools, there are no guidelines. Inside the school is the most crucial part. That’s where most things could go wrong.

There are also no training requirements or guidelines proposed by the bill, and it would be entirely up to the districts who decided to utilize said bill.

I may be catastrophizing when I say this, but I feel as if LB1339 might increase school shootings by giving potential shooters a weapon already inside the school.

Here is what I imagine: A student is angry, and in a moment of high tension, they reach for the weapon in front of them.

Contrast that to the planning that goes into other shootings – there’s much more intervention time.

I understand the anxiety that prompted the bill’s introduction. I get it. A school shooting is a distant yet real threat to many kids. And especially at Millard South, it’s easy to think of how shootings could have been avoided or stopped, but it’s wishful thinking to assume someone else with a gun could stop everything. Take Uvalde Elementary as an example. When hundreds of cops filled the school, they were too hesitant and scared for their own lives to take action. As brutal as it is to say it, why should we assume it would go differently if someone had a gun already inside the school?

Not to mention the massive teacher shortage racking the nation. Will introducing the responsibility of a weapon into day to day teaching really help understaffed schools find employees? And if it does, are they the people who should really be teaching?

The real issue is found underneath all of the panic.

Shootings have become a terrifying yet commonplace part of American life. While I welcome discussion on solutions for this, I don’t think adding more guns will solve the problem.

Instead, to truly prevent school shootings, a complete cultural shift is required. Until then, it’s best to invest in security measures and training rather than adding to the danger already inherent.

Chase Zagurski

Armed school security bill is promising but flawed

LB1339 is worth considering simply for its promise of improving emergency readiness in educational facilities. The possibility of meeting armed security would deter prospective shooters from making schools their targets; if deterrence were to fail and a shooting did occur, the immediate response from security staff would prevent the situation from devolving into a prolonged, Uvalde-esque barricaded suspect standoff. This could benefit smaller, rural districts in western Nebraska in particular, where population densities are low and school facilities may be out of easy reach of law enforcement offices. The bill’s additional provisions for providing public safety agencies with “emergency response mapping data” would also considerably improve emergency readiness. This information would apply not just to law enforcement responses to active shooter situations, but could affect efficient and more uniform responses to fires, accidents, and inclement weather emergencies.

That’s about where my approval of LB1339 ends. While its prospects of elevated safety and emergency readiness are indeed promising, one important aspect of the bill is of great concern: its utter lack of specificity. The restrictions and requirements attached to the bill were purposefully left vague or nonexistent, ostensibly to prevent schools from getting bogged down in details and being discouraged from taking advantage of the bill entirely. While it is important that individual districts and schools have the final say on if and how they want to implement such initiatives, the current lack of state-wide requirements for important elements of launching an armed security program (use of force guidelines, training and certification standards, approved arms and ammunition, and safe storage methods) means that program implementation will likely wildly be different from school to school. If requirements set by a school are far too restrictive, otherwise perfectly eligible and willing personnel may be precluded from participating in the program, all but nullifying the bill’s provisions. If school-set requirements are far too lax, the safety of students would be put in jeopardy by lack of standards for storage and personnel training.

The only way to improve the bill and ensure that armed security policies can be rolled out and applied in a safe and effective manner would be to tighten requirements where they exist, and introduce new requirements where there is a void: schools must utilize methods of safe storage approved by local law enforcement, security personnel that are to be entrusted with carrying weapons onto a campus should undergo rigorous qualification and certification regimen, and districts should cooperate with community figures intimately familiar with responsible defensive applications of firearms in order to set equipment and training standards. All of these must be set as hard requirements within law if LB1339 or a bill like it is to succeed.

In short, in its current state, the bill adopts a focus towards mass appeal and modularity that, should it pass and its provisions become widespread across Nebraska, would guarantee only that armed school security would roll out as either entirely ineffective or extraordinarily dangerous. In my position as both a concerned student and gun rights advocate, LB1339 is an interesting concept definitely worth exploring – one that could work wonders in the prevention and resolution of gun violence in our fair state – but more needs to be done to ensure that it helps far more than it could hurt.

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About the Contributors

Shelby Neeley, Online Editor-in-Chief

Shelby is a senior in her second year in journalism. In addition to Newspaper, Shelby is also on the Yearbook this year. She is also involved in Slam Poetry and bowling. In her free time, she likes to teach herself instruments and listen to music.

Jamison Hanway, Online Editor-In-Chief

Jamison is a junior this year, and his third year on the staff. He is involved in varsity swim and broadcasting. Out of school, he enjoys camping, hiking, photography and he is involved in Scouts BSA.