Denver Post Gets It Half-Right on Armed Presence in Schools

The left has been doing a lot of “whatabout”-ing on the Charlie Kirk assassination by pointing out that a school shooting in Colorado that took place the same day hasn’t received nearly as much attention. So, let’s talk about what happened at Evergreen High School for a bit. 

According to authorities, a 16-year-old student armed with a revolver shot two students before taking his own life. As bad as that is, it could have been worse, because the student was apparently able to stroll through the campus for nine minutes before police arrived on the scene, and fired more than twenty rounds before law enforcement was able to respond. 

In the wake of the shooting, the editorial board at the Denver Post is calling for an armed presence on every school campus. Specifically, they want to see school resource officers in place. 

We were dismayed to learn that security at Evergreen High School may not have been a priority because of the school’s location about an hour west of Denver in the forested foothills of Jefferson County.

Mental illness and radicalization can occur anywhere, especially in a society connected seamlessly online to every type of content imaginable.

Every school in this state needs a dedicated resource officer who can respond immediately to a threat on campus.

Seconds matter in a shooting, and two students from Evergreen High School are in the hospital fighting for their lives. Jefferson County Sheriff’s Deputies responded quickly to the shooting but even that was unable to prevent tragedy.

The evening before the shooting at Evergreen High School, the school’s principal told concerned parents that a school resource officer had been “deprioritized” for Jefferson County’s mountain schools. The school’s full-time deputy was on medical leave, and the contract with the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office has a deputy on campus “as staffing allows.” At the time of the shooting, the officer assigned to the campus was responding to a call off campus.

Every Colorado school needs an armed officer on campus during school hours. We are glad the Jefferson County School District will increase security before students return, and a similar plan should be put in place at every school in the state.

The paper acknowledges that putting an SRO on every campus is “a challenge financially and logistically,” but argues that “in the face of yet another school shooting, we don’t see another option.”

I do. Put armed school staff in place on every campus. 

Colorado law already allows for schools to have trained and vetted employees carry concealed firearms while on the job to serve as a first line of defense in case of a shooting like the one that took place at Evergreen High School last week, and FASTER Colorado has trained hundreds of educators and staffers over the past few years.  

We recorded this just two days before the Evergreen High School shooting. All the lessons still apply, as they do every single time.

We’ve tried making schools “gun-free” zones for decades, and we see the results. It’s time to try something new.

Children deserve to be…

— Laura Carno (@lauracarno) September 12, 2025

There are already armed school staff in place in dozens of schools across the state of Colorado, and the Post editorial board is blind if they do’t see that as an option. 

I’m fully in support of having SROs on campus, but it’s not financially or logistically feasible for smaller, rural districts and private schools. Ideally, every campus would have both; one or more school resource officers who can seek out and engage an attacker on campus while armed staff shelter in place with their students. But if the option is no armed presence at all or armed school staff, the latter is far more effective at preventing the loss of life and ensuring a quick response to an active assailant on school grounds. 

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to deflect, gaslight, spin, and lie about our Second Amendment rights. 

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