Parkland safety panel recommends arming some teachers

The panel investigating the Florida high school massacre is recommending that teachers who volunteer and undergo extensive background checks and training be allowed to carry concealed guns on campus to stop future shootings.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission voted 13-1 Wednesday to recommend the Legislature allow the arming of those teachers, saying it’s not enough to have one or two police officers or armed guards on campus.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri, the commission’s chairman, pushed the measure, saying that most deaths in school shootings happen within the first few minutes, before officers responded.

Seventeen people died in the Feb. 14 attack. Suspect Nikolas Cruz stopped five times to reload.

A Florida judge has refused to dismiss a negligence lawsuit filed by the parent of a slain Parkland school student against a former deputy who failed to confront the shooter.

The judge on Wednesday rejected arguments by attorneys that ex-deputy Scot Peterson had no legal duty to rush into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School during the Feb. 14 massacre that killed 17 people. Peterson remained outside the entire time.

Attorneys for parent Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow died in the shooting, contended that as the school’s assigned resource officer armed with a gun he had an absolute duty to try to protect the people there.

The lawsuit is one of many filed in the wake of the shooting. Twenty-year-old Cruz faces the death penalty if convicted in the slayings. He has offered to plead guilty in exchange for life in prison, but prosecutors reject that.