The latest salvo in the guns on campus battle was fired at the 7th Annual Rural County Summit in Havana. Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri opened a discussion about violence against children with a call out to Columbine, Sandy Hook and Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“Prevention isn’t realistic. Prevention is not reality," Gualtieri said after listing the schools that are synonymous with mass killings.

Gualtieri has gained national prominence as the chair of the Marjory Stoneman Public Safety Commission. He thinks, and the Commission concluded, that allowing teachers and staff to carry guns on campus offers better odds at saving students' lives than waiting for law enforcement to respond to an active shooter.

“It’s going to happen again. Anybody who thinks it’s not going to happen again is just being unrealistic. Is being naïve. And probably has their head in the sand,” Gualtieri told the nearly 300 lawmen and educators June 26.

Teachers, parents and students lobbied against the commission’s recommendation to allow teachers to carry guns into the classroom when the Legislature debated the proposal in April. They said stricter gun regulations and more money for mental health services could stem the violence and were safer alternatives.

Educators and lawmakers like Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, balk at the commission's belief that school shootings are inevitable and all that can be done is to limit the damage the next one creates. Montford, a former high school principal, notes that most shooters are either students or former students.

He and others are calling for more intervention and counseling programs, promoting funding for plans to identify and work with students at risk of becoming disaffected.

"If we don’t do something about mental health, all heck will break loose,” Montford told the two-day Havana gathering before Gualtieri spoke.

A 'dark narrative'

Montford had opposed SB 7030, which allows guns in the classroom in the hands of trained teachers or staff. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill into law May 8.

It orders every Florida public school to have at least one armed safe-school officer on campus. To help districts meet the requirement, 7030 repealed a prohibition on teachers’ participation in the Coach Aaron Feis Guardian program. The program allows school staff that pass drug and psychological tests and score an 85 percent rate on firearm training to carry a gun on campus.

Gualtieri put together a 3-and-a-half-hour dissection of the 3 minutes and 51 seconds it took 19-year old Nikolas Cruz to kill 14 teenagers and a high school coach and administrator at Stoneman Douglas to explain why he thinks a teacher with a gun has a better chance of saving kids’ lives than waiting for law enforcement to come to the rescue.

Opinions abound:

“We have to view it through the lens of not what we want, not what we like, not the way we think it should be in a perfect world that doesn’t exist, but what can you live with," said Gualtieri about the effort to prevent gun violence at school.

Neither the Florida Department of Education or the School Superintendent Association has compiled a list of districts that will use classroom teachers as the armed school safety officer that 7030 mandates.

But after a study revealed 200 schools did not have at least one-armed officer on campus, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said he will hold a news conference in August to name the schools that do not comply with the law’s requirements.

Gualtieri bristles when asked about school districts’ failure to embrace the commission’s recommendations. In a blunt, no-nonsense lawman way, Gualtieri tells people a school shooting can happen anytime, anyplace at the hands of anybody – and is over in fewer than four minutes.

But opponents reject the idea that guns in the classroom are the answer.

“I think that dark narrative sits very well with the NRA's storyline for our country,” said Kate Kile of Moms Demand Action, which delivered 8,000 petitions to DeSantis’ office seeking a veto of the school safety bill.

Kile, Montford and others argue that putting more guns into all the places where people gather is not going to result in fewer instances of gun violence.

“I think there is a way to have legal responsible gun ownership that doesn’t devolve into a wild west situation where everyone needs to be armed all the time to feel safe.”

Hard decisions and the high cost of safety

Along with the at least one gun on campus requirement, the bill directs districts to adopt a plan to deal with an active shooter and develop a threat assessment process, among other things.

In June, DOE reported that 33 school districts have implemented a Guardian program. But not all those districts will allow teachers to carry guns. Districts can satisfy the armed school safety officer requirement with sheriff deputies serving as school resource officers, hiring private security or designating school staff other than a classroom teacher.

“Cost is a huge factor for rural districts,” said Bill Brother, assistant Superintendent of Suwannee County Schools, about the district’s decision to arm teachers.

A deputized school resource officer will cost a district up to $100,000 a year. A teacher who doubles as a safe-school officer gets a $500 stipend.

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“It is just not practical to enlist the service of a law enforcement officer. An armed staff member is the most cost-effective way to respond to an active shooter and be in compliance with the legislation,” said Brother.

Only about half of Florida’s 4,000 schools have an SRO, said Gualtieri. It would cost around $400 million to place one in every public school. Lawmakers agreed to spend $180 million for SROs and $500,000 on the Guardian program in the state budget that goes into effect July 1.

Leon County School Superintendent Rocky Hanna said in Corcoran's comments and Gualtieri’s presentation he sees an effort to pressure districts to put guns into the hands of classroom teachers.

“If they had their way, they would arm every teacher,” said Hanna. “Their message has been if we are not doing everything that is allowed by the Guardian program, then they are going to hold us responsible if something happens.”

Hanna said he and his school board think that having more guns on campus would only increase the chances of something bad happening.

“Not withstanding a school shooter,” said Hanna.

In addition to school resource officers, Leon County hired 50 security monitors and equipped them with a radio. During school hours, they patrol the campus perimeter and report any suspicious activity to the SRO.

“You have to have a common-sense approach about the best way to protect children,” said Hanna. “Having been in large high schools the majority of my career, I just think turning our schools into the wild, wild west and arming teachers in every hallway is a recipe for disaster.”

Solutions elusive

Gualtieri responds he supported expansion of the Guardian program to include teachers because of what he saw at Stoneman Douglas.

“Go take a look inside that school and see those kids’ blood on the floor. Then see what you want to do,” said Gualtieri, after his presentation that uses video, 911 calls and deputies' radio transmission to illustrate a killer’s casual step-by-step hunt for victims at the end of the school day.

Montford, a former teacher and principal disagrees with the sheriff about what to do. He spoke before Gualtieri at the summit and issued a call for help from the lawmen and educators to solve the problem.

“Law enforcement and the schools can’t solve this by themselves,” said Montford. “Tell us what you need and then help us in the Legislature to make the case to fully fund what you need. If we need law enforcement on every campus then the Florida Legislature is bound to fund it.”

Kile thinks regulations that includes age limits on gun purchases, strict enforcement of background checks on all purchases and red flag laws that allow law enforcement to confiscate guns when mental health issues are suspected can help.

“You are 25 times more likely to be murdered in this country than in any other developed nation,” said Kile. “We don’t have higher instances of mental illness, or societal issues or video games but what we do have is a disproportionate number of guns per person.”

Though on opposite sides of the dispute over guns on campus, Kile, Montford and Gualtieri seem to agree that they are faced with a problem that has deep roots in society. But Gualtieri insists that the "problem is not guns."

“The problem is people. That’s the problem,” said Gualtieri. “The problem is people like Nikolas Cruz. And the problem is systems that don’t effectively deal with Nikolas Cruzes. That’s the problem.”

Writer James Call can be contacted at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee