This week, the Colorado House is scheduled to consider a bill that will let anyone with a concealed carry permit carry a gun in our state’s public schools. House Bill 1168 would actually force schools to allow guns on their property and in their buildings. The legislation is sponsored by Sen. Tim Neville and his son, Rep. Patrick Neville — big supporters of Colorado’s extremist gun rights organization, Rocky Mountain Gun Owners (RMGO).

And it’s mutual; RMGO is a big supporter of the Nevilles. So it should come as no surprise that their answer to the gun violence that has plagued our state is more guns.

It’s taken right out of the gun lobby’s playbook, along with the popular saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” The Nevilles believe that putting guns into the hands of good teachers will stop bad guys from committing mass shootings in our schools.

If you ask me, that seems a little over-simplified.

The last thing we need is to force guns into our elementary schools, middle schools and high schools. This misguided idea of arming teachers is the gun lobby’s answer to what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and at Columbine High School in Colorado.

I have sat through committee hearings and listened to gun lobby activists avow that my sister Mary, the school psychologist at Sandy Hook, should have been armed. I have heard and read ad nauseam that if Mary had a gun she would have been able to shoot and kill the disturbed young man that blasted his way into her school killing her, 20 children and five other educators.

This scenario has my sister either carrying a loaded side arm or having a loaded long gun at the ready to take on a shooter. Advocates of guns in schools have a Hollywood idea of what my sister or the principal would have been capable of on that terrible Friday morning in December 2012.

My sister was running a meeting in a conference room with other educators. In the gun extremists’ worldview, upon hearing the blast, Mary would have been calm and focused enough to know what had occurred beyond the room she was in. Mary would have been able to know that an armed male blasted his way through the front doors and now was the time to grab her gun from a locked safe, because she clearly wouldn’t leave a loaded firearm anywhere a student might be able to take it.

In the “if I was there” world of gun extremists, Mary would have come running around a blind corner to the school lobby firing her gun and killing the shooter before he could kill her or anyone else. In this fantasy version, Mary is a superhero of epic proportions. There would be no crossfire. There would be no children in the hallways who could be shot during this exchange of gunfire. Mary as the superhero would have taken out the shooter with one clean shot.

This script could be the next blockbuster movie, but is it realistic? Do we, as parents, believe that this could actually happen if an armed intruder blasted his way into our children’s schools? Do we, as parents, believe that putting guns into our teachers’ hands in our children’s classrooms is the best answer to gun violence in our schools?

As a parent, I think not. I believe the way to protect our schools is with trained law enforcement or trained security guards. Our teachers and administrators went into education to teach and nurture our children, not to become sharpshooters.

One way to reduce gun violence in our schools is by requiring background checks on all gun sales — as our state’s new law has already blocked 298 gun sales to criminals and other prohibited purchasers including people convicted of sexual assault, under domestic violence restraining orders, and prohibited from possessing firearms due to dangerous mental illness.

As a family member of a gun violence victim, I will continue to show up at the Capitol and speak out in support of common-sense gun laws and against dangerous gun bills to keep all of our schools and communities in Colorado safe from gun violence. I will be there on Monday to make sure our schools remain safe havens for learning and educational development, not battlefields or warzones.

Jane Dougherty is a Colorado resident and the mother of four. Her sister, Mary Sherlach, was the school psychologist killed in the Sandy Hook mass shooting on Dec. 14, 2012.

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