Gov. Kay Ivey's proposal to allow certain school administrators to have firearms was met with criticism on two fronts -- on one flank, the governor's approach was slammed by one of her Republican opponents for being too rigid, while she was attacked from the left, where one Democratic gubernatorial candidate called the proposal "insane."
Details of the Alabama Sentry Program, which would allow school administrators in schools that don't have school resource officers to store firearms on school campuses, were unveiled Wednesday by Ivey and ALEA. The governor, who faces three challengers in Tuesday's Republican primary, said the proposal is a stopgap measure until all schools can have resource officers and that the administrators would have to be approved by local superintendents, sheriffs and school boards before being designated as sentries.
Huntsville Mayor Tommy Battle, one of Ivey's rivals, said through a spokesman on Wednesday that the governor's plan is inflexible.
"Tommy Battle doesn't believe a 'one size fits all' plan works when you're talking about school safety," said Battle campaign spokesman Nick Lough in an email to AL.com. "His preference is to have police officers on campus who are trained. In Huntsville, Tommy Battle and local law enforcement teamed up to put mature police officers in schools and added security measures to harden campuses."
Lough added that Battle believes arming teachers or administrations should be up to local school systems.
Tuscaloosa Mayor Walt Maddox, one of the top gubernatorial candidates on the Democratic side, suggested that the sentry program was flawed.
"As Walt has said before, he believes arming teachers and administrators is an insane idea," said Maddox campaign spokesman Chip Hill.
Maddox's school safety plan includes hardening schools for security, training school security officers, restricting guns at schools with exemptions for such officers, and implementing gun control measures to ensure "mentally unstable" individuals don't get access to guns.
Other candidates for governor -- Democrat Sue Bell Cobb and Republicans Scott Dawson and Bill Hightower -- did not respond to requests for comment.