Nearly a decade ago, Texas lawmakers created the school marshal program, a way for educators to carry weapons inside schools. It was the state’s rapid-fire legislative response to an unthinkable national horror 2,000 miles away when 20 first graders and six adults were shot and killed in a Sandy Hook, Connecticut, classroom just before Christmas 2012.
“Whoever is serving as the school marshal acts immediately,” state Rep. Jason Villalba, R-Dallas, said at the time, explaining how his bill would protect Texans in active shooter situations. “The whole point of this is to reduce response times from minutes down to seconds.”
The legislation empowers school districts to identify employees with a license to carry a firearm to volunteer as school protectors. Those individuals would undergo an 80-hour training and psychological exam, granting them access to a gun on campus. It is otherwise against federal law to have a firearm in a school zone.
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