The Oregon school district where a teenage gunman was shot dead after killing four people had banned guns from its premises, authorities said. A 16-year-old local resident, armed with a long gun, shot through locked doors to enter Silver Rail Elementary in Bend on Thursday. Three children and a teacher died and a 7-year-old child and a 54-year-old teacher were transported to hospital with critical injuries, said Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz at a news conference Thursday evening.
The shooter, who has not been named, was found dead inside the school minutes after the shooting was first reported. He was shot dead by a community member who had seen him enter the school and followed him inside, Krantz said. The school is in a district, Bend-La Pine Schools, that banned guns from school grounds after a change in Oregon law in 2021.
Newsweek has contacted the school district for comment via email. Thursday’s shooting has reignited debate about school policies around guns, some people arguing that schools should remain gun-free zones, others saying that allowing some adults to carry concealed weapons could limit damage in the event of mass shootings. The Bend-La Pine Schools’ website says that "firearms/weapons are prohibited on all district property." The website also says students are barred from bringing or possessing weapons of any kind on school property, including replicas.
Any student who violates the rule faces discipline, including expulsion. The school district passed a ban after Oregon Senate Bill 554 was passed by lawmakers in 2021, giving every public school district the option to ban guns from their premises. The Bend-La Pine school district was among the few school districts that chose to close the exception allowing holders of a concealed handgun license to carry weapons onto public property where possessing a gun would otherwise be a felony, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB).
Only 13 percent of the state’s public schools had chosen to ban guns from their premises by June 2022, said OPB. The Bend-La Pine school board approved its ban in December 2021, according to OPB. At the time, the school board’s chair, Melissa Barnes Dholakia, told the outlet that it "allowed us to complete the commitment that we already had in place of having gun-free schools." Under the policies adopted by the districts, anyone violating the ban could face trespassing citations, removal from campus and referral to law enforcement, OPB reported.
Holders of a concealed handgun license who violate school gun bans face a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $6,250 fine. State law does still allow possession of firearms that are stored unloaded and locked inside vehicles on school property. Earlier this month, a teacher at La Pine High School, one of the district's schools, resigned after inadvertently bringing a gun to campus, local news station KTVZ reported.
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