In reaction to the Uvalde school massacre, a county sheriff in North Carolina has committed to place safes stocked with AR-15 guns and ammunition at six nearby schools.
For the next 2022–2023 academic year, Madison County Schools is stepping up campus security by working with Madison County Sheriff Buddy Harwood to install powerful weapons that might be used in the case of a hostile invader.
Harwood said, “We were able to install an AR-15 rifle and safe in every one of our schools in the county.” We also have tools for breaking into such safes. In such safes, we have backup magazines with ammunition.
These breaching tools are designed to unlock automated locking doors that can only be opened from the inside, which might imprison students and teachers in a room with an attacker. These doors are placed in schools.
According to Harwood, his agency launched the action after learning that the Texas state house’s report on investigations into the Uvalde massacre identified poor decision-making and a lack of training on scenarios involving an active shooter as two major failures.
Sheriff Buddy Harwood told the Asheville Citizen-Times, “Those cops were in that facility for so long, and that guy was able to penetrate that building and inflict so much harm and death on so many children.”
“I simply want to make sure my deputies are ready in case something occurs,” the deputy said.
In June, when Salvador Ramos, 18, was killing 19 students and two teachers, Uvalde police remained in a hallway for more than an hour before shooting him to death.
Will Hoffman, the superintendent of Madison County Schools, said local school system representatives have been periodically informed on the new safety measures and meet with local leaders, including Harwood, for training sessions with instructors from Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College.
The Madison County Sheriff’s Office now has access to school video systems that were previously exclusively under the control of the county’s Emergency Operations Center thanks to Hoffman (EOC).
Brush Creek Elementary, Hot Springs Elementary, Mars Hill Elementary, Madison Middle, Madison High, and Madison Early College High are the six schools that make up the Madison County school system that will be affected by the changes.
In order to avoid having to wait for the fire brigade to arrive in the event that we have someone blocked in a door, Harwood added, “we placed the breaching tools in the safes.”
We’ll have the equipment necessary to break down the door, if necessary. I don’t want to waste time by going back outside to the vehicle to get an AR.
He said, underscoring the need of self-defense, “I want my people to be as prepared as prepared can be, hopefully we won’t ever need it.
In a video posted to Facebook, the sheriff who made the announcement of the new school safety measures noted that although he understood some people’s concerns about seeing school employees handling AR-15s, it is a necessary precaution given the rise in school shootings around the nation.
I teach people how to use weapons. According to Harwood, our 9 mm, 135-grain bullet is what we carry. “To safeguard that school, my SROs are carrying a total of 50 rounds with them at all times.”
SROs, or school resource officers, are in charge of both maintaining safety precautions and preventing crime in schools.
“I detest that our country has reached a point where I must install a safe in our schools and lock it up in order for my deputies to be able to get an AR-15.”
But even if we turn it off and declare that it won’t occur in Madison County, we can never be sure,’ Hardwood added.
I want the parents of Madison County to know that we will do everything possible to make sure that our children are safe in our educational system.
I’m going to follow my parents’ wishes in its entirety if it means standing at that door with the AR slung around that officer’s neck to protect our children.
The sheriff stated that during two training sessions conducted in the summer, personnel of his staff collaborated closely with school administrators.
Harwood remarked, “I have a huge host of individuals that are extremely competent of putting this training on.” “My personnel will receive training hours for it, including the fire departments,” the sponsor, A-B Tech, said.
This year alone, there have been 27 school shootings.
The bloodiest school shooting in the last ten years occurred at Robb Elementary in Uvalde.
In 2012, a shooter in Connecticut opened fire and killed 26 people, 20 of whom were students at Sandy Hook Elementary School who were as young as 6 years old.
May’s death toll topped that of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida in 2018, which claimed 17 lives.