Oregon lawmaker: Arm teachers to prevent school shootings

In the wake of the horrific elementary school shooting in Connecticut, Oregon State Rep. Dennis Richardson (R) said Monday that school officials should be trained to respond to mass shooting incidents with lethal force.

"It's been 13 years since the tragedy in Columbine, almost 6 years since Virginia Tech, and now we all mourn the massacre that occurred in Connecticut last Friday," he told CNN's Suzanne Malveaux. "We cannot continue to be passive when the only person who's armed in a school shooting situation is the shooter himself, the psychopath."

In an email obtained by Gawker, Richardson told local Oregon school districts that "most of the murdered children would still be alive" if he were a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, assuming that "the school district did not preclude me from having access to a firearm."

On CNN, the state representative explained that "two or three" school officials should be voluntarily selected to be "campus responders." These armed school officials should be well-trained and their firearms should be kept in a safe location, such as a locked metal container, he said.

"We cannot continue to have the only armed person on the premises of the school be the mass killer," Richardson continued. "And we can't afford to put police in every campus. There's a one-in-a-million chance this is going to happen, but if we have volunteers who are trained and prepared to respond with lethal force, then we can lessen the number of casualties that will occur in the future."

Richardson is not the only lawmaker who thinks teachers should be armed. On Sunday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said the tragic shooting in Connecticut could have been averted if the principle had an assault rifle.

Watch video, uploaded to YouTube by CNN, below: