Tennessee House Speaker Beth HarwellNASHVILLE – House Speaker Beth Harwell, R-Nashville, said today she doesn’t believe allowing Tennessee teachers go armed is the answer to last week’s massacre of elementary schoolchildren in Connecticut.
“I think it would be asking way too much of our teachers for them to be armed in a classroom, and I’m not in favor of going down that route,” she told reporters. “I really think you really have to be highly qualified to handle a gun in a high-stress situation, which is in fact what that was.”
In recent days, two East Tennessee Republican lawmakers have broached the idea of allowing teachers or school staffers to be trained and armed.
In a blog posting, Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, said he will be bringing back legislation “to allow licensed and checked faculty and staff, at schools, to be able to have a gun on campus if a safety officer is not present on campus.”
Newly elected Sen. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, has said he is interested in putting law enforcement officers or “similarly trained” school staffers in schools.