Testimony before the Arkansas Legislature’s Joint Performance Review Committee

On Monday, July 9th, Dr. John Lott was the lead witness before the Arkansas Legislature’s Joint Performance Review Committee. A copy of Lott’s PowerPoint is available here.

From CBS Channel 11 in Little Rock.

But the uniform praise for SRO’s came to a halt later at the Capitol when Dr. John Lott of the gun rights think tank Crime Prevention Research Center spoke to the committee.

“It’s an amazingly boring job,” Lott said while questioning whether resources should be spent on putting one or a small number of officers on a campus instead of allowing teachers to train and carry weapons. “Somebody who is in uniform or readily identifiable as the person with the gun makes them a target.”

Lott compared the job of school resource officer to that of air marshal, where he says turnover is high. He also presented survey results that he said came from one of the largest law enforcement organizations that indicate armed officers overwhelmingly support letting teachers and other carry guns.

But members of gun control group Moms Demand Action question those numbers, as they have done at every turn whenever Lott testifies. . . .

From KARK NBC Affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas and at Ozarks First.

“Having an armed teacher or staff actually makes the job of the school resource officer safer,” Dr. John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told lawmakers. 

Lott, a gun lobby researcher, argues one SRO per campus does not make sense.

“It’s like putting the person there with a neon sign that says, ‘Go and shoot me first,'” Lott said.

Instead, Lott would like to see a mixture of SROs and teachers concealed carrying, with signs posted across campuses that certain staff members are armed.

“They [shooters] don’t know who they would have to go after first,” he said.

When we obtain a copy of the audio of Dr. Lott’s testimony it will be added to the website.

Here are the Tweets from a reporter at KATV Channel 7 in Little Rock.