Harnett school board unanimous in support for storing rifles inside schools

The board voted to build gun safes, at an estimated total cost of $2,500, for the 10 middle and high schools where resource officers are stationed. The safes would be bolted to the wall and floor with fingerprint access only for the authorized officers, Sheriff Wayne Coats said.

Coats said he pitched the idea to the school board after the recent string of mass casualty events.

Del Forrest agreed. "In today's society, with everything that's going on, to me personally, it makes all the sense in the world," he said.

But Forrest wonders how effective guns in a safe can be.

"I don't argue with the concept," he said. "I just have questions about how – if something does happen – will all that unfold and how long will it take before the officer puts in action what needs to be done, and how many people die before he gets there?”

Steven Hudson, a parent of two children in high school and two in middle school, agrees with the presence of the deputies in school, but the idea of them storing high-powered rifles on campus makes him pause.

"It takes an extreme situation that tries to justify having extra weapons in a school house," he said. "With the high-powered rifle, the long rifle, you don't know where that bullets going to go once it goes into the first target, and that bullet can keep traveling and injure another victim."

Resource officers currently keep rifles stored in their vehicles while on campus. They also carry the same weapons that their fellow deputies do: pistols, pepper spray, Tasers and batons.