BISMARCK -- North Dakota lawmakers have again introduced a bill that would allow anyone with a Class 1 concealed carry permit to carry a firearm in a school, so long as they have the permission of that school's governing body.
House Bill 1195's primary sponsor is Rep. Dwight Kiefert, R-Valley City. The North Dakota Legislature last considered this proposal in the 2013 legislative session. The bill passed through the House but stalled in the Senate.
Kiefer said the bill language had been tweaked to make it more palatable to senators by raising the level of permit required and mandating coordination and training with local law enforcement.
"They'd receive some of the same training that a (school) resource officer would have," Kiefert said.
Specifically, the bill allows public and private school boards to require training not just in firearm usage, but in "legal issues relating to the duties of peace officers and the use of deadly force" as well. It also allows for the board to require an examination to determine "whether the trainee is psychologically fit" to respond to an active-shooter situation.
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Some, including teachers, union officials and state officials, criticized Kiefert's bill in 2013.
North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction Kirsten Baesler said that prevention, and not firearms in schools, was the better way to deal with potential active-shooter incidents.
Interviewed by telephone Tuesday, Kiefert said he didn't see the difference between an armed police school resource officer and an armed school employee who potentially would receive some of the same training a police officer would receive and who would be working with the police.
Kiefert said his bill wasn't intended for North Dakota's larger municipalities, but for its remote towns, where the law enforcement response can be a half-hour or longer.
"Who's responsible for the schools now?" said Kiefert, adding that his bill wouldn't force school boards to do anything.
"We're trying to give them more freedom," he said.
The bill would allow a school board to meet behind closed doors to consider whether to approve a person to carry a concealed weapon in school, and to treat information from that meeting as a confidential record.
Law enforcement would be informed of who’s authorized to carry, but they also would have to keep that information confidential.
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“We don’t want to have a list of which schools are protected and which aren’t,” Kiefert said, comparing it to the air marshal program. “The less information we put out there, the better off we’re going to be.”
The bill was formally read Monday, then referred to the Education Committee.
Kiefert’s bill is one of several aimed at expanding concealed weapons permissibility.
House Bill 1241 would remove churches, political functions, music concerts and public parks from the list of public gathering places where possessing a firearm or dangerous weapon is currently a Class B misdemeanor under state law.
The bill’s prime sponsor, Rep. Roscoe Streyle, R-Minot, said he purposely didn’t try to strike schools from the list because he knew Kiefert’s bill would address it.
House Bill 1157 also would allow North Dakota elected officials to legally pack heat in the state Capitol and other public buildings.
Streyle said the state is “way too restrictive” on where concealed weapons are allowed, and if all the bills were to pass -- “which we know they probably won’t,” he added -- there would be few, if any, areas where they weren’t allowed.
“You really don’t know where you can and can’t go unless you’re up on the law, and that’s the frustration I hear from constituents,” he said.
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Mike Nowatzki of Forum News Service contributed to this report.
