On this episode of the Bespoke Parenting Hour Podcast, host Julie Gunlock speaks with Laura Carno, IWF senior fellow and founder and executive director of FASTER Colorado—an organization that trains armed K-12 school staff—about the consequences of removing school resource officers (SROs) from public schools. Since the death of George Floyd, there has been a big push, particularly in blue cities, to defund the police. That push has now extended into the public school system, where—in light of much opposition—city councils are cutting SRO budgets and, quite literally, taking the security and safety out of schools.


TRANSCRIPT

Julie Gunlock:

Hey everyone. I’m Julie Gunlock, host of the Bespoke Parenting Hour. For those new to the program, this podcast is focused on how parents should custom-tailor their parenting style to fit what’s best for their families, themselves, and most importantly, their kids.

Since the death of George Floyd last year, there has been a big push, particularly in blue cities, to defund the police. There’s a variety of ways, really creative ways, that city councils are doing this. They’re cutting budgets, reassigning officers to other duties, and in many cases, they’re removing police officers entirely from schools. That’s exactly what happened in my own city of Alexandria, Virginia, a few months ago.

Interestingly, this was done by a city council in opposition to what the school board wanted, and despite the request of many school principals, parents, and even students who pleaded with the council to keep the officers in place. It was quite a thing to watch them defund and actually cut the budget, cut the budget for SROs in light of so much opposition. It’s also important to note that my city’s council did this despite an extraordinary spike in in-school crime, specifically a 19% increase in violent crime in the city of Alexandria itself.

Why is this happening? Why the push to take security and safety out of schools? Here to talk to me about this and many other issues is IWF senior fellow, Laura Carno. Laura is a political media strategist, and she’s the founder and executive director of FASTER Colorado, an organization that trains armed K through 12 school staff, at no cost to the school, through her media company, I am Created Equal. Laura helped to recall the Colorado state Senate president in 2013 over his gun control agenda and his refusal to give his constituents a fair hearing. Brava.

Laura also founded a local government watchdog organization in Colorado Springs, Colorado, called springstaxpayer.com that protects the interests of taxpayers from government overreach. Laura is the author of one of my favorite books. It’s called Government Ruins Nearly Everything: Reclaiming Social Issues From Uncivil Servants. Great title. She is a regular in Colorado media and national media as well. Laura, thanks so much for coming on.

Laura Carno:

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

Julie Gunlock:

Laura, you do so much for IWF as a senior fellow and you cover a lot of the gun control issues. This is certainly related to that, and certainly what you do training teachers. So I want to talk a lot about that issue. But first, I wanted to just get your opinion about this SRO issue. You sent me an article earlier in the week, an op-ed that was written by Mo Canady. He’s the head of the National Association of School Resource Officers.

He wrote in this op-ed that so far this year, 33 school districts have kicked out SROs. He says that that is a dangerous trend, and that essentially these schools are announcing to the world that they are a soft target. We are not that many years away from Parkland, from the other school shootings that we have seen. Clearly, with the Parkland school shooting, we saw that we needed really well-trained SROs. The SROs at that school were not well-trained. But the evidence does show the SROs are a very important security measure in schools. Why are school districts doing this? Why do they not see that they are making schools more dangerous?

Laura Carno:

Yeah. Let’s first say that the reason, and Mo Canady from the National Association of School Resource Officers, he is absolutely correct that when they say they’re getting rid of them, it really leaves a soft target there and you’re announcing that you’re a soft target. But the reason that school resource officers or other armed adults are good in school is if crime happens in school, and we’re not talking, if somebody steals a pack of gum out of somebody’s backpack, we’re talking about violent crime, having somebody there who can deal with it reduces the incidents of those crimes and somebody is there quickly to stop it.

This can be anything from an assault, all the way up to a school shooting, that are so tragically on our TVs. Most people can agree that having somebody there is good. What we’re seeing in these 33 school districts that have kicked their school resource officers out, and the many, many, many more who have talked about it, is there is this concept of, “We need to stop the school-to-prison pipeline.” It’s not something I’m advocating. This is what the folks are saying who wants to this removed-

Julie Gunlock:

I’m sorry to interrupt, but this goes back to Arne Duncan and Obama. This kind of chatter started during the Obama administration. This isn’t new. This is this prison or school-to-prison pipeline. That is a talking point that’s been around for quite a while.

Laura Carno:

Yeah, absolutely. I call it the summer of love last year when all of the big cities were erupting in these riots. A lot of cities, people in some of these bigger cities, were talking about defunding the police and eliminating police. It added some fuel to the fire, so to speak, to this, “Let’s remove SROs from schools,” because school resource officers, for folks who don’t know, they’re actually members of your local police department or sheriff’s office. So they are an actual member of law enforcement, sworn member of law enforcement, who spends part of his or her day or all of his or her day in a school. It got wrapped into this defund the police movement.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah. I’m so glad that you backed us up. I tend to sometimes just launch into a conversation about something without explaining, for instance, acronyms. SRO stands for school resource officer, correct?

Laura Carno:

Correct.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes, that’s right. I mean, some schools don’t call them SROs. They have different words for them. I think people also just assume school resource officers, all they do is look for the school shooter or they head off violent crime. But school resource officers, for instance, in Alexandria, Virginia, we have a really huge problem with MS-13. That is obviously a gang that is very active in my community. They do recruitment in Northern Virginia high schools. I’m sorry, middle schools too, middle schools and high schools.

The Washington Post has even reported on this. This is a very well-known problem in the Northern Virginia and Washington DC area, and also probably parts of Maryland. In Alexandria, Virginia, just at a park that I literally used to walk my kids to, a dead body was dumped in that park. It was a gang-related MS-13 murder. I mean, this is in my community. And so, one thing that the SRO officers also do in our local schools is look out for that, recruitment and gang activity, and really are a resource for the police groups that…

There are taskforces that follow this stuff in Northern Virginia, and DC, and Maryland, and they can really offer information on those recruitment efforts. When people think that SROs are only there to get minority children in trouble, they do more than that. They do an awful lot of protecting of the community in a larger sense.

Laura Carno:

Right. The other thing that a lot of folks don’t think of, because it’s never really documented unless somebody does a feel-good story on something, in some cases, the SRO might be the only positive role model that somebody sees from a law enforcement [crosstalk 00:08:48].

Julie Gunlock:

That’s right.

Laura Carno:

They might live in a high crime neighborhood where they’re often seeing neighbors being arrested or something like that. So to help kids develop some kind of a positive association with law enforcement, that is very helpful. Vast majority of the time they’re not arresting people.

Julie Gunlock:

Yes, that is really important. Again, I just think it’s important that people understand that SROs serve multiple purposes. They’re often, I think, stigmatized as these villains in this story, as somehow contributing to this so-called pipeline, which when you think about what is going on in schools, and crimes that happen in schools, and the criminals who are actually committing these crimes, these are complicated issues that deal with family dynamics, the lack of discipline in the household.

It really bothers me when you get these catchy phrases, like, “The school-to-jail pipeline,” that ignores everything else that might contribute to a child committing a crime on school property. So it’s frustrating because we often don’t have what I think are the complicated conversations. That leads to these kinds of so-called solutions like pulling the SROs entirely out of the school, leaving the school vulnerable, leaving children vulnerable to potential violence from other students or a mass shooter kind of situation where no one will be able to help.

In view of this, Laura, in view of this ridding the schools of SROs, it makes what you are doing so much more important, in my opinion. Tell me about your efforts to help train teachers who have chosen to be armed on school grounds.

Laura Carno:

Sure. I’ll just do a baseline quick conversation about the law. I am here in Colorado where it has been lawful for school boards and charter school boards to designate armed staff. That law has been in place for about 17 years. 34 states across the country have some lawful path for school staff to be armed. So it’s different in different states, but some lawful path. Not all of them follow it, but there are many, many states in the country that have armed school staff, Colorado being one of them.

What we do, my organization, FASTER Colorado, understanding that we’ve got lots of armed staffers out there, and also understanding that they’ve been getting training, and it’s adequate training. But who among us wants adequately trained, armed staffers when we can have extremely well-trained armed staffers? So we saw that gap in there, that we really want them to have world-class training, so that if God forbid the worst happens on their campus, they can respond and save lives.

In 2016, I attended a class in Ohio by FASTER Saves Lives. They kicked off this whole concept in the days following Sandy Hook and I ended up bringing that here to Colorado in 2017. So we’re going into our fifth training year. We say armed teachers, but just to dispel any weirdness around that, it’s any armed school staffer in a K-12 campus. Statistically, we’re seeing 40% are actually teachers in a classroom. The other 60% do something else, which does make a difference tactically because they don’t have to think about, do I respond to gunfire somewhere or do I protect my students?

That’s a big decision for folks to have to make, given whatever the details are of the situation. But we’ve got principals, janitors, counselors, school nurses. We even have a lunch lady, bus driver. So lots of different positions throughout the school, which, if you’re a principal or a superintendent thinking about how you’re deploying your security team on a daily basis, where in the school are they, that does make a difference. You have some that are in classes, classrooms, and some who are anywhere at any given time.

Julie Gunlock:

I like to say I live in the deepest blue on the city. It’s like the deepest blue on the color wheel. If you go to a paint store and you look for a dark blue, mine is right before black, okay? So I live in a deep blue city where even people get squirrely if a kid is holding a nerf gun, okay? And so, I’m thinking of this from my… The parents that live around here. They would say something like, “Kids will be frightened if they see their teacher with a gun.” What’s the response to that kind of comment?

Laura Carno:

Yeah. Interesting in Colorado, because it’s a very different culture as far as lots of folks are concealed carry holders here. I say in Colorado, don’t think that kids have never seen firearms on their parents’ hip. But in other parts of the country like you’re talking about, on the deep blue on the color wheel, everywhere that I have been aware of armed staff programs throughout the country, it is 100% concealed carry. It’s a deep concealment. It’s not something where if the breeze flaps open your jacket, that everybody’s going to see it. It is a deep concealment. So-

Julie Gunlock:

Explain deep concealment to me.

Laura Carno:

Yeah. Gosh, we could do two hours on holsters. There are lots of places on a person’s body, to be able to carry a firearm. Not all of them are just on the hip, where, like I say, a breeze could easily blow open a jacket and see that. There’s a lot that we don’t telegraph publicly, but there are a lot of places on a person’s body that are very well hidden by their clothing. We even think about it like a kindergarten teacher, who’s little ones come in everyday and hug her. That kindergarten teacher needs to think differently about where she might be carrying, so that nobody bumps into it and says, “Hey, what’s that?” So lots of different discussions about that in our classes, for sure.

Julie Gunlock:

Laura’s right not to detail this too much. It’s really interesting. It’s like any technology. If there’s a demand for it, someone will design something. And so, obviously these concealments are designed in a way to serve different demographics. And so, there’s going to be ones that are more suitable for a teacher who might be around children, and again where physical touch might be a thing. And so, it’s really interesting that these products and products have innovated to the degree that they can provide a teacher the ability to conceal carry and still be around children.

So I think it’s important that parents know that it’s not like Bonanza where there’s a six shooter on their hip and it’s hanging down on a belt that hangs down. This isn’t the kind of thing we’re talking about. It’s, as you say, deep concealment. I think that’s also a reason to talk to your kids, though. It’s interesting that you say, “Here in Colorado, it wouldn’t be unusual to actually see a gun on… It’s conceal carry, but you might see it if the wind does flap a jacket in the wind and you can see it. It wouldn’t spook a kid because it’s more common out there.”

But I do think it’s interesting in some of these deep blue cities where it’s like guns are so verboten that they don’t even see any good reason. We talked about earlier, you’re announcing to the world that you’re a soft target. There are good reasons to arm yourself, and it’s specifically because of criminals not caring that it’s a gun-free zone or that it’s a school where guns aren’t allowed. I think that it says something to parents that perhaps educating your kids on the proper use of guns, on where guns can help people, can save lives, that might be the conversation to have instead of objecting to a teacher who wants to defend themselves when they’re sitting duck in a classroom.

I also want to talk to you a little bit about, we’ve had kids home for an entire year now. My kids have not stepped into a classroom in over a year. I want to talk a little bit about how school administrators… You talk to these people, you train these people. Are they worried a little bit about the behavioral issues from kids who’ve really been out of a social setting for so long? What is the thinking on that from some of these school folks?

Laura Carno:

Yeah, 100% correct. I actually did a TV interview on this, gosh, maybe six months ago about the concern that when kids come back to school, whenever that was at the time, there was so much untreated mental illness out there. There were parents who were struggling and unable to help their kids going through emotional difficulties. What happens when they all come back to school? If there are these people who are in need of mental health or are having other issues that take them to that extent of wanting to harm their teachers and their fellow students, they’ve been sitting around home for a long time with lots of time to plan. So it’s a big concern.

Interestingly, when we move into the summer months, and this is our prime training season, we have fewer new schools coming online because… When I say coming online, that means passing the policy through their school board to arm staff in the fall, for example, we usually don’t see tons of activity in the summer. But because kids went to school, just depending on where you were in the late spring, for example, administrators and school boards were going, “Uh-oh, we’re having more of these social, emotional issues going on,” and it has caused more folks to be thinking about…

I’ve been going to a lot of school board meetings, a lot of executive session of school board meetings to have these discussions far more than I have any other year in the summer.

Julie Gunlock:

That is so concerning. Look, we know that kids are really dealing with depression and anxiety, rates of suicides are up. It’s really pretty horrifying to think of what kids have been through. I mean, here in Alexandria, Virginia, the number of children who just literally stopped going to school, stopped. I’ll tell you, I have one child in the public schools. This is his last year. Next year he’s going to be going to a Catholic school, as are my other children.

It is really hard, these last couple of days of school. Summer out. We like to go to the pool. It’s really hard to keep him motivated. And yet there are a lot of parents who aren’t home to constantly tap them on the shoulder and make sure they’re in their class. And so, the rate of children who’ve completely abandoned school… Then, and you have some school districts that aren’t really even giving out grades, aren’t really tracking this, and are just going to scoot kids off into the next grade, act like this didn’t happen.

You think about the anxiety they’re going to have when they go into that next grade and they really had educational losses the year before. So I really worry about kids’ mental health. I’m so sad to see that instead of helping faculty, school faculty, prepare for what everyone hopes never happens, but violence from a mentally unstable student, instead of preparing the faculty and staff for that, hopefully a non incident, hopefully it doesn’t happen, but instead they’re getting rid of the SROs, they’re not providing any training, at least in, again, these deep blue cities like I live in, they’re not helping the teachers defend themselves. They’re not preparing them.

Instead, what my school district spent the summer doing is equity training and how to teach critical race theory. I mean, it is completely bonkers the priorities and how jumbled up everything is. So it really is a troubling time. I want to go through a few more of these myths that I hear about teaching and training teachers. One other common myth I hear is that teachers don’t have the right mindset, that only police officers should arm them or should be…

I love this argument because they say only police officers should be armed and only police officers have the right mindset. Then they strip the schools to the police officers. Okay. But there are some schools that have SROs and are not moving to remove them, but they don’t want to train teachers. I’ve heard you talk about this, how it’s important that SROs have backup for goodness sake, that they have help in defense… Often, these are very big schools. Talk to me a little bit about that idea that teachers can’t be trained to do this kind of work, with this other skill, essentially.

Laura Carno:

Yeah. It’s funny that we hear so often from, let’s say, the general world of the teachers’ unions, how amazing teachers are and all of this kind of stuff, but apparently there’s one skill they’re incapable of learning. I don’t understand that.

Julie Gunlock:

Defending themselves. Yeah.

Laura Carno:

Yeah. It’s crazy. There were some national polls that showed that only 8% of school staff approve of a policy like this. And that’s fine because it’s not like any school out there has 100% of their staff armed because it is a voluntary position. When a school does this, they say, “We’re going to be doing this policy. Come see me privately if you’d like to be part of the team.” What I keep hearing from principals is, “Oh, I never knew that Mrs. So-and-so was a gun owner,” because it’s just not something that is talked about in the teacher’s lounge, typically.

But yeah, you look at all of the conceal carry holders out there. And so, about 9% of our population here in Colorado, 9% of adults, have a conceal carry permit. Does anybody honestly think that none of those people work in schools? Of course, they work in schools. People who work in schools are just like everybody else. Some have firearms for self-defense and some don’t. The ones who raise their hand and say, “I’d like to be a part of that program,” they already have that mindset. We take them through a significant amount of training on mindset, as well as the firearm skills that they need.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Every one of these horrific school shootings that we’ve seen, we see firsthand that the school staff has the right mindset because what do they keep doing? They keep putting their bodies between bullets and children every single time, Julie. And so, we know they want to save children. We just think that for those who choose to have a firearm, that they should have that right to be able to stop the threat, save the children, and go home to their families.

That self-defense aspect is not often talked about. We do talk about the safety of the children, which is great. It’s a primary thing we should be thinking about. But what about the self-defense rights of those who work in schools-

Julie Gunlock:

Absolutely.

Laura Carno:

… sitting ducks? Why are they okay a mile away defending themselves in a grocery store, but they go to work which is a gun-free zone, which killers don’t care about?

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah, well-

Laura Carno:

And then all of a sudden they can’t defend themselves.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah. As far as my city council, it’s been nothing but, “Teachers are heroes. Teachers are wonderful. Teachers are tremendous. Thank a teacher. Love a teacher.” All this. It’s been very, very supportive of the teacher community. Then they pull the SROs out the very year that they’re going to have kids returning to a classroom who might have significant mental health problems. I just don’t understand this. And then, again, teachers are so great, teachers are so wonderful, but they’re not allowed to defend themselves. It’s an absolute sickening, double standard. And frankly, it frustrates me.

Look, I get Randi Weingarten, and I know the teachers’ unions are like a wildly liberal union. But for all the talk about defending teachers and taking care of teachers, they sure don’t care about one aspect of teaching, which is quite risky. That is potentially teaching a child who is mentally unstable and could bring violence in… Look, it’s not just these mass casualty events. Teachers deal with assaults. The rates of assaults on teachers is quite high. It’s something that we don’t hear a lot about in the media.

I’ve read a couple articles where there just isn’t a lot of information about that stuff because they tend to keep it pretty quiet. But I do worry about teachers in this situation and I wish we heard more from teachers. Maybe in more conservative areas of the country, that is discussed, but it certainly isn’t here. I think, again, you’ve got these different myths out there that help support the idea of teachers should not be armed.

One of the other myths that we hear about is cops not knowing who the bad guy is if the teacher also has a gun. So if you have this one of these school shooting situations and the police officers and the SROs are trying to deal with this, the idea being that here comes a teacher who’s armed trying to help the situation and then the teacher gets shot. Tell us the training surrounding that situation.

Laura Carno:

Sure. It’s important to first note that most of these situations are over within a few minutes, and, typically, law enforcement response time is a few minutes times two, three, four, five or more depending on how rural the school district is. So the likelihood of that link up with law enforcement going badly is a little bit less in a situation like this, yet we significantly train around this.

First, we tell the armed staffers, it is their job not to get shot by the police. If a cop comes in and sees somebody with a gun, they believe that that person is a threat. The folks that we train know that, and it’s their job not to get shot. Again, we don’t telegraph all of our specific tactics. We don’t want the bad guys to hear them. They could be somewhat similar to law enforcement dealing with somebody who’s off duty law enforcement, out of uniform, who is intervening in a crime, that sort of thing. So there are some similarities.

Because our instructors are all active duty law enforcement trainers, they do academies, they train SWAT team, they know this stuff very well from a law enforcement standpoint, and they teach our armed staffers the same thing that they teach cops in all of this and not getting shot by cops and how to stop active shooter threats, all of that stuff. We’re teaching our folks the same thing that law enforcement’s learning in the academy and on SWAT teams.

Julie Gunlock:

It’s interesting, a lot of these myths that you hear, the teachers can’t… This next one I’m going to ask you about fits in this category too. It’s almost like treating teachers like they’re morons and they can’t figure this stuff out, like they’ll just wander in there waving their gun. It’s insulting, I guess, how some of these myths make it seem like teachers are incapable of doing the training and learning what needs to be learned essentially. So it’s funny how they’re treating teachers badly in these myths that they promote.

I hear a lot and I want to ask you specifically about SROs and the studies that are out there. You hear a lot from advocates who want SROs out of the schools. You hear a lot of this, “There’s no evidence that SROs cut down on crime. There’s no evidence that SROs do anything to help reduce rates of crime.” You hear all of these talking points. What is the status of research on SROs? Is there solid data showing that SROs…

I mean, it’s in some ways hard because a crime didn’t happen, so it’s hard to measure. But is there good data on… I mean, I know you’re not an expert in SROs necessarily, but is there any information on that that you’re aware of?

Laura Carno:

Yeah. There’s some really good data out there about… It covers a few of these topics on these rampage killings and any other of the mass casualty events, whether it’s in a school or a movie theater, or what have you. If there is a presence of an armed person, so that could be a school resource officer, law enforcement, an armed citizen, anybody who is there armed, coming to the aid, that the death count is in the single digits as opposed to the double digits.

And so, there’s a school shooting that happened here in Colorado, not the big one at Columbine that was so devastating and started everybody really paying attention to these things. At Arapahoe High School, a disturbed student came in intending to do lots of carnage. There was a school resource officer on the campus. He sprinted for 46 seconds to get to the library where this happened. One student lost her life, Claire Davis. Now, you can say that it’s better that only one student lost her life as opposed to 20 students. Absolutely.

But that one student, Claire Davis, is the only important person to Claire’s family. And so, when you look at fewer deaths are always better than more deaths. Absolutely. We are grateful that there was somebody armed on that campus. But it is a very fair question, this is why we do what we do, is that SRO… By the way, nobody’s faulting that SRO for not running fast enough.

Julie Gunlock:

Oh.

Laura Carno:

He was in a very different part of the campus. But this happened in the library. Had that then, a campus that had other armed staff in addition to just the SRO-

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah, or an armed librarian.

Laura Carno:

Exactly. So could Claire Davis’s life have been saved? Like you said, we’re never going to know. We can’t play A and B scenarios and see what happened. But might there have been a chance? I say there might have been a chance. I think if that person had come through our FASTER training in Colorado, a very good chance that they could have stopped Claire Davis’s death.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah. You think about some of these school shootings that you hear about, these are obviously very, very sick individuals, in every case. I mean, even Parkland, which was so horrifying because of the inaction by the SROs, and the terrible training that they had. And just frankly, the lack of… I mean, I hate to say it, but the lack of courage on the part of some of those SROs in that particular case. That is one case, but in a lot of these cases, these shooters were totally unchallenged in terms of being challenged by another armed person who can actually stop them.

Laura Carno:

Right. Yeah. If you look at the scenario like happened in Parkland, like happened in Columbine and some other places, what is worse… If you’re a parent, I’m a grandmother now, I think about my little one’s going into school soon. Can you think of anything worse than a gunman killing child after child after child with nobody to stop them? I want some kind of a fighting chance for our kids, even if it’s not mine or yours, for society’s kids. We all feel these massacres when they happen. We all feel these deeply. They affect whole communities and we want them to stop.

Julie Gunlock:

The truth is that we have a society that culturally has got some pretty serious problems, okay? When you look at the biographies of these shooters, terrible family problems, isolation, very few fathers present in a lot of these cases, and mental problems. Long records of mental problems. Again, like some other cultural issues, like I mentioned, isolation, and here we are coming off a year where children were really much more isolated than any other time in their lifetimes, and yet we have this intersection of the George Floyd death setting off Black Lives Matter and all of these riots around the country.

Then the isolation of kids, which has created all of these increased mental problems for children, again, anxiety and depression, I am really worried about schools are supposedly going to be fully open in the fall, and yet we have cities stripping schools of SROs. It is just the most dangerous combination and I really do worry about this. I’m so glad that you’re doing what you’re doing, Laura.

I firmly believe in arming teachers or giving teachers the choice, giving the teachers the choice to arm themselves, to protect themselves, and to protect their classrooms. So I think what you’re doing is so, so important, more important now than ever before. Tell people where they can learn more about your organizations.

Laura Carno:

Sure. In Colorado, you can go to fastercolorado.com. By the way, FASTER stands for Faculty Administrators’ Safety Training and Emergency Response. I like to think of the word faster as the faster you stop the killer-

Julie Gunlock:

That’s what I thought. Yeah.

Laura Carno:

… and the faster you stop the bleeding.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah, yeah.

Laura Carno:

Yeah. Then we do bleeding control training too, by the way.

Julie Gunlock:

Wow.

Laura Carno:

So that’s fastercolorado.com. Then if you’re anywhere else in the country and you’re interested in, is this happening in your state, the mothership, as I call it, fasteraveslives.org is in Ohio. They’re who helped us get started here. We’re running autonomously now. But they are also helping other states who want to do something like this as well. But in your kid’s school district, talk to your administrators. Talk to your school board. Let them know that you want this option discussed.

It’s different in different states on how it gets passed, but make sure that they know that this is important to you. You want this option discussed in school board meetings, city council meetings, however it’s done in your area. You are the voter. You are the parent. You’re hiring a school to educate your kid and keep them safe, and you want them returned home alive every day, not most days. And that’s not too high a bar. So make sure that your politicians and public servants know this.

Julie Gunlock:

Laura, that’s such a great message, and I think one I just want to add onto that to say that this year, more than ever, we’ve seen parents get involved in their local schools. I think prior to this year, a lot of parents were like, “Yeah, I’ll go to the yearly fundraiser. I’ll do some parent-teacher conferences, but I’m checked out, whatever.” Now, boy, are people interested and people really are paying attention.

And so, look, as the pandemic fades and we move on, I hope people stay active in their local communities. I hope people find new causes, and this is certainly one that is worth your time and effort. Laura, what your Twitter and how can people find you specifically?

Laura Carno:

Sure. I’m on Twitter. I’m @lauracarno, L-A-U-R-A C-A-R-N-O. My website is the same, lauracarno.com. You can find my work on gun policy at iwf.org. I try to keep folks up-to-date on what’s going on federally with gun control and some other cultural issues regarding the right to keep and bear arms and keeping ourselves safe.

Julie Gunlock:

Yeah. Laura does such great work for IWF on all of the gun policy issues. She writes a lot, keeping slightly busier now that Biden’s in office.

Laura Carno:

Goodness gracious.

Julie Gunlock:

We’re tracking all the craziness that’s coming out of the Biden administration. Really enjoy Laura’s writing too on these subjects. So check her out at IWF. Laura, thanks again for coming on.

Laura Carno:

Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Julie.

Julie Gunlock:

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