A local gun rights group is bringing an advanced training course to Colorado to help local teachers, principals and other school personnel learn how to stop a Columbine-style mass shooting.

The effort, launched by Coloradans for Civil Liberties, is welcomed by school officials in rural areas, who say teachers and others need to be trained to stop armed assailants since local law enforcement easily could be miles and miles away.

Critics say a three-day course cannot adequately prepare a teacher for a close-quarters confrontation with an armed attacker.

The course is run by trainers with police, SWAT and federal law enforcement backgrounds and leads participants through move-and-shoot drills, hand-to-hand fighting and advanced medical triage of gunshot wounds.

Faculty/Administrator Safety Training and Emergency Response, or FASTER , has been taught in Ohio for the past five years, and nearly 900 school staff members have completed the program. FASTER was started in Ohio by the Buckeye Firearms Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the rights of citizens to own and use guns, and Tactical Defense Institute, a private self-defense and firearms training company.

“I don’t think there is anything as good as FASTER,” said Laura Carno, co-founder of Coloradans for Civil Liberties, which is bringing the training program to Colorado. Carno’s group is “committed to restoring the Second Amendment freedoms of Colorado citizens,” according to a news release. The class is being organized in partnership with the conservative-leaning Independence Institute.

About 25 school districts in Colorado, almost all in rural areas, currently designate staff members who legally carry a concealed firearm as school security officers.

“Dozens of school staff are already so designated,” Carno said. “We want to bring them world-class training in stopping active shooters.”

The first training class is scheduled June 20-22 at a shooting facility in Weld County. Applicants must be school staff members who have their concealed-carry permit and who have been approved as a school security officer by their school board, Carno said.

Tuition is $1,000 per person and scholarships are available, thanks to the Independence Institute, said Amy Cooke, executive vice president of the Libertarian think tank.

“We have raised scholarship money, because we never want the lack of training budget money to keep any school personnel from having access to lifesaving training,” said Cooke.

Any kind of medical training for school personnel is a good idea, said Eileen McCarron of Colorado Ceasefire, a group that lobbies for gun violence prevention through legislation. But allowing teachers to carry weapons on campus is just wrong-headed, McCarron said.

“As a former teacher, the idea of arming teachers is frightening,” she said. “Teachers have enough to do without worrying about stopping an assailant with a gun.”

Teachers would either keep a gun with them during class, which means it could be taken away from them by a student or an assailant, or keep it locked up, critics say. In that instance, teachers might spend critical time trying to access the gun while violence is exploding all around them.

“None of which really makes a lot of sense,” McCarron said.

Both sides of the gun rights debate lined up over Senate Bill 005 in this year’s legislature. The bill would have allowed county sheriffs to train school employees in gun safety and to establish a basic level of training in gun safety and in stopping a shooter, said the bill’s sponsor, Senate Majority Leader Chris Holbert.

There currently is no training standard for school employees, said Holbert. He noted there also is no required standard training for private security guards, while sheriff’s deputies receive extensive training.

Opponents said the bill was an attempt to allow more guns onto school campuses. They also said training could not adequately prepare a teacher for a confrontation with a determined school shooter.

The bill eventually was killed in the Democrat-controlled House.

Parents and students appreciate the armed staff members in the Bennett School District, about 30 miles east of Denver, said Keith Yaich, the district’s CEO. It could take sheriff’s deputies 20 minutes to respond to an emergency on the Bennett campus, Yaich said.

“We are aware of all the school shootings going on, and we didn’t want that to happen here in Bennett,” said Yaich. Their relative isolation prompted Bennett school officials two years ago to allow qualified staff members to carry weapons.

Yaich said the district may send some of its employees to the FASTER class. “It’s something we are looking at,” he said. “It looks pretty interesting.”