Arm teachers, NRA official suggests

updated 8:01 p.m. ET March 25, 2005

PHOENIX - All options should be considered to prevent rampages like the Minnesota school shooting that took 10 lives — including making guns available to teachers, a top National Rifle Association leader said Friday.

“I’m not saying that that means every teacher should have a gun or not, but what I am saying is we need to look at all the options at what will truly protect the students,” the NRA’s first vice president, Sandra S. Froman, told The Associated Press.

Gun-control restrictions would not have prevented Jeff Weise, 16, from killing nine people and himself Monday at Red Lake High School near Bemidji, Minn., said Froman, an attorney expected next month to be elected president of the NRA, which claims 4 million members.

The presence of an unarmed guard at the school failed to stop the siege, she noted.

“No gun law, no policy that you could implement now or that was already implemented, I think, could possibly prevent someone so intent on destruction,” she said. “I think everything’s on the table as far as looking at what we need to do to make our schools safe for our students.”

Froman said if it is the responsibility of teachers to protect students in a school, “then we as a society, we as a community have to provide a way for the teachers to do that.”

Froman cited the 1997 school shooting incident in Pearl, Miss., where a teacher retrieved a gun from his car when a student opened fire, then held the student at bay until police arrived.

A law prohibiting guns in schools “is not going to stop someone who has evil in their heart and who has the capacity to commit those crimes from doing them,” Froman said.

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