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Ohio House Bill 99 looks to allow armed teachers in schools without peace-officer training

In Ohio, police officers receive more than 60 devoted to firearms. If the bill were to pass, teachers would likely deal with a much lower number.

COLUMBUS, Ohio —
Doug Murillo is a gun expert and says shooting a gun is not as easy as it looks.

"It's muscle memory. It's driving that continual training that has to take place,” he tells 3News' Lydia Esparra. 

Murillo is up to speed on Ohio House Bill 99, and he says if teachers are going to be armed, they need extensive training.

Earlier this year, Ohio Republicans introduced the bill which would "expressly exempt persons authorized to go armed within a school safety zone from a peace officer basic training requirement, to impose training and other requirements on those persons," according to a summary

At today’s Ohio House Criminal Justice Committee meeting in Columbus, Representative David Leland (D) added an amendment to the bill that "would require that the Ohio peace officers’ training commission be the entity which writes the rules for the training individuals that they must complete before they are permitted to carry a firearm within the school safety zone.”

This means that the government, rather than local school boards, would be in charge of training for armed teachers. However, under this amendment, educators would not be mandated to take the full Ohio peace officer's training course.

In Ohio, police officers receive more than 700 hours of training and 60 hours of firearms training. If the bill were to pass, teachers would likely deal with a significantly lower number of training hours.

Murillo believes if teachers are going to carry guns, they need to be one with the weapon. Staff should be able to stay calm under pressure, he says, a trait that comes with training. 

“It's not like the tv shows where you point and shoot and things happen," Murillo says. 

The bill was voted out of committee on Thursday and will go before the Ohio House of Representatives sometime next week. 

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Editor's note: The video in the player above is from a previously published, unrelated story.

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