DENVER – Colorado Republicans want to give schools, particularly charter schools and rural schools, the option of allowing teachers and other school staff to carry a concealed weapon as a first line of defense against armed intruders.

The measure was rejected by a majority of Democrats in a party-line vote in the state House Judiciary Committee this week after gun control advocates packed a hearing at the state capitol Tuesday, FOX 31 reports.

Republican state Rep. Steve Humphrey, who sponsored the bill, told the news station supporters of the bill include mostly small rural school districts that can’t afford to hire a school resource officer, and charter schools that are prohibited by state law from hiring officers.

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“This is not a mandate; we’re not forcing districts to do this,” Humphrey said. “This simply allows the charter school or district to adopt these policies if that’s something that the community is comfortable with.”

It was clear the option was something a lot of urban residents and school officials aren’t comfortable with.

“We have officers who are trained in responding to these incidents, and now we’re adding to that people who don’t have that training,” Michael Eaton, the chief of security for Denver Public Schools, told FOX 31. “In this bill, there’s no requirement for the type of training they have to have.”

At least one charter school official testified in favor of the bill, but opponents reportedly dominated the discussion with hours of testimony from teachers union officials, teachers, and gun violence victims, FOX 31 reports.

“After watching last year’s gun control push galvanize conservatives and gun owners, a few thousand of whom flocked to the capitol to protest, and watching the recall elections and short-lived secession movement that followed, Democrats are intent on demonstrating strong public support for those new laws and for its general position on gun issues,” according to the news station.

“Conversely, the relative drop in the number of Second Amendment activists at the capitol for this year’s hearings of gun-related proposals seems to indicate either a slight cooling of passions or, more likely, a complete loss of faith in appealing to a Democrat-controlled legislature.”

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Democrats in the House Judiciary Committee ultimately voted down the proposal in 7-4 partly line vote.

The sad part is the measure would likely have had very little impact on inner-city school districts, home to most who testified against the bill, because those folks clearly have no interest in arming teachers. The bill didn’t mandate teachers carry guns, it only gave schools the ability to consider the option.

Because Colorado law prevents charter schools from hiring armed resource officers, and many rural schools can’t afford them, Democrats are essentially telling the public those children don’t deserve the same protection as their peers in city schools.

Democrats would apparently rather leave students exposed as vulnerable targets than to rethink their anti-gun ideology in the name of school safety.