As federal and state legislators continue to debate gun control and school safety measures in the months after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., communities around the country are wasting little time taking safety issues into their own hands. Some schools have hired armed guards. Others have implemented buzzer systems at their doors.

Very few have gone so far as training teachers and other faculty members to carry weapons, and support for such measures seems to be lukewarm. Bills to allow school employees to arm themselves are stalling in most of the roughly two dozen states where they were introduced this year.

But the community making up the 600-student Fairview School, where a sign at the main entrance reads “Drug Free Gun Free School Zone,” represents a culture in which the idea of guns in classrooms is not necessarily intimidating. Hunting a variety of game like deer and turkey is as routine a form of recreation here in the craggy, wooded Ozarks of south-central Missouri as beer and baseball is in some parts of the nation.

By the time they are 6, many young boys and girls already have learned how to safely handle a weapon and have shot their first deer. Some live in homes where guns are not under lock and key, or on vast prairies where they shoot skeet with their families.

Sherri Roy, who has four children at the school, said in an interview that she “was really pleased” that some staff members were armed.