"If they're coming at us with an AR-15, we're going to return with the same or greater firepower," Indian River County Sheriff Eric Flowers told WFLA radio.
Flowers later told CBS 12 News that having AR-15s on the school premises would save resource officers the time of recovering a rifle from their vehicle.
"If something were to happen during [the school day], they would have ready access to that AR-15 and their shield to be able to respond immediately."
Last week, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey announced that in the circumstance of an attack, resource officers would be ready to "meet violence with violence."
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In a Facebook post, Ivey wrote: "While I pray it never happens, I can assure you that our Brevard County Sheriff's Office School Resource Deputies are prepared to win the battle to protect our children and teachers!"
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The new policy appears after a few ill-handled and horrifying shootings which occurred in schools, specifically the Ulvade Elementary School shooting, which ended in the death of 19 children and 2 teachers.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) has spoken much about its School Shield program, praising school fortification as an alternative to gun control. Pamphlets for the program push high-tech alarm systems; schools with high fences, no windows and few trees.
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However, the NRA is not alone in looking at school design. In the wake of so many school shootings in the last two decades, U.S. schools have added panic buttons, smoke cannons, and facial recognition software to try and warn off impending threats.
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Mass shootings have altered the overall environment in schools, too.
Most states now request active shooter practices and almost all schools use them, according to Everytown, a gun reform coalition. In some schools, students and teachers barricade doors and hide under tables during such drills, while other schools have come under fire for introducing increasingly gory simulations in the classrooms, utilizing fake blood and pellet guns to simulate real active shooter scenarios.
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Another environmental shift since the 90s has been the vast increase in police officers on school campuses, which increased since the Columbine massacre in 1999, and again after Sandy Hook in 2012. There is now more law enforcement in US schools than there are social workers – and most US schools have a police officer.
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With fortress-style buildings and uniformed guards and armed cops on patrol increasingly touted as the solution, some have questioned whether schools have begun to resemble prisons more than educational institutions.
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