DAYTON — News Center 7 has been working to clear up some confusion over a controversial new House Bill that has passed the Ohio House and Ohio Senate.
The confusion comes from these words in House Bill 99 – “May not exceed 24 hours.”
This refers to the required training to arm adults in schools. However, during a news conference on Thursday, the bill’s sponsor said at least 10 times – “minimum requirement,”
>> RELATED: House Bill 99: 2 local school districts offer opposing views on potential new legislation
News Center 7 spoke with a legal expert at the University of Dayton to help clear up the language in the bill. We tried to get clarification on the language from the Ohio Statehouse, and even in a summary from the Legislative Service Commission, it refers to the training as maximum rather than minimum.
Tom Hagel, UD Professor of Law Emirates said, “The language basically says in initial training no more than 24 hours and then it goes on to say later that there can be additional training,”
Hagel said he’d interpret the language as its written instead of at least 24 hours of training. It’s a maximum of 24.
“It’s too bad that it was drafted that way especially keep in mind what this is doing. This is basically asking teachers to be law enforcement officers. There’s a lot more to being a law enforcement officer than 24 hours of firearms training,” Hagel said.
>> RELATED: House Bill 99: What training will look like
The bill later says that there’s nothing restricting schools from going over the listed maximum. In Rep. Thomas Hall’s press conference on Thursday, he referred to the training as a minimum nine times I the first 26 minutes.
“We wanted to make sure we were setting a strong minimum number,” Hall said. “They get to make the training requirements outside of the minimum requirements we’re setting forth in this bill.”
Now it is possible that if Hall’s words were a mistake, Gov. Mike DeWine can sign the bill and then it can be amended with another bill at a later time.
“It’s not rare, but it’s not common,” Hagel said.
Ultimately, it is still up to the school boards to decide if they want to allow guns in their schools and what their requirements may be. The training curriculum must also be approved by the Ohio School Safety and Crisis Center.
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