New Plan Will Arm Some School Administrators
A new program will allow Alabama school administrators to carry firearms, Gov. Kay Ivey announced Wednesday. The Alabama Sentry Program will arm administrators in schools that don’t have a school resource officer. Training will take place over the summer, Ivey said. The program will be voluntary and will authorize so-called sentries for “the use of lethal force to defend the students, faculty, staff, and visitors of his or her school from the threat of imminent bodily harm or death by an armed intruder.”
To carry a firearm at school, an administrator would have to pass a drug screening, mental health assessment and a “stress test” according to the plan. Participation would also require approval from the local school superintendent, local school board, and county sheriff. The program requires armed administrators to keep their firearms secured.
Eric Mackey, Alabama’s new schools superintendent, applauded the move in a statement Wednesday saying the program is “one way for us to put more safety resources in schools without having to seek new funding.”
Ivey said participants may be trained over the summer to begin carrying weapons during the upcoming school year. The Alabama Sheriff’s Association has endorsed the program. Alabama Secretary of Law Enforcement Hal Taylor joined Ivey for Wednesday’s annoucement. “School security is one of the highest priorities for law enforcement and this program will help first responders identify and stop threats quicker and before they happen,” he said.
During the last legislative session, Republican Rep. Will Ainsworth, who is running for lieutenant governor, introduced a bill to arm teachers. The bill faced strong opposition from educators and other gun safety groups.
Last year, the University of Alabama at Birmingham held active school shooter drills to train people to respond to armed intruders.
A South Korean court sentences Yoon to 5 years in prison on charges related to martial law decree
A South Korean court has sentenced former President Yoon Suk Yeol to five years in prison, the first verdict in eight criminal trials for allegations that include his 2024 martial law decree.
Venezuela’s Machado says she presented her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump during their meeting
Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said she presented her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday even as he has questioned her credibility to take over her country after the U.S. ousted then-President Nicolás Maduro.
A federal judge dismisses the DOJ’s effort to get voter data from California
The Trump administration has been dealt its first legal setback in its unprecedented effort to consolidate voter data traditionally held by states.
Behind the front lines of the legal battle against Trump’s National Guard deployments
As President Trump began a pattern of deploying the National Guard to democratic-led cities, several Democratic attorneys general and their staffs worked to coordinate their fight against the deployments – and, ultimately, they won.
Trump health care plan doesn’t help people facing skyrocketing ACA premiums
President Trump announced a plan that addresses drug costs and health savings accounts, but not the health insurance premium spikes millions of Americans are facing.
Verizon just had a big outage. Here’s what we know
Verizon says a software problem caused the glitch and they are conducting a postmortem, but experts say outages are "a fact of life" these days.
