On Q Professional Investigations

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama – Escaping an active shooter, self-defense and other survival skills will be taught at a new summer camp for kids offered by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

That is a long way from the usual summer camp traditions of swimming in the lake and making macramé bracelets. But Sheriff Mike Hale says the camp will teach young people to be prepared for whatever life throws at them. “Our greatest allies in public safety are people who know what to do in an emergency,” Hale said in a press release today.

The name of the camp is Prepared, Not Scared. Two sessions, one week each, will be offered to students entering the 5th through 7th grades. The first session will run August 5-9, and the second August 12-16 at Ruffner Mountain Nature Center.

The campers will be taught by instructors from Fresh Air Family and Hoover Tactical Firearms. The program is based on the National Rifle Association’s “Refuse to Be a Victim” program. Some of the topics include what to do if they find a gun or encounter an active shooter. They will also learn non-aggressive ways to try to escape an attacker or be aware of potential hazards.

Fresh Air Family instructors will also teach survival skills should they get lost. That will include how to orient directions, build a shelter, make a fire and discern which plants are edible and which are poisonous.

“Everyone,” said Whit Wright of Hoover Tactical Firearms, “should have personal safety skills in today’s world.”

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(CNN) — Florida authorities have a message as the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial looms: raise your voice, not your hands.

Anticipating that the outcome of the very public, and racially-tinged, case is likely to disappoint one swath of the population or another, law enforcement agencies have set up a response plan.

Part of it is a public service announcement that the Broward County Sheriff’s Office released this week.

In it, a black teenage boy and a Hispanic girl urge viewers to “stand together as one. No cuffs, no guns.”

Zimmerman is a white Hispanic who is on trial for last year’s shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a black teen, in Sanford city. Sanford is in Seminole County.

He is charged with second-degree murder, and says he acted in self-defense. Prosecutors are arguing he profiled the teen.

Millions of Americans have already made up their minds about what should happen. And no matter how the verdict falls, authorities worry passions will be inflamed.

That’s where the video comes in — a plea not to resort to violence.

“Freedom of expression is a constitutional right,” the sheriff’s office said. “While raising your voice is encouraged, using your hands is not.”

In the video, the boy says, “Let’s give violence a rest, because we can easily end up arrested.”

The girl adds, “Let it roll off your shoulders. It’s water off your back, don’t lack composure. Because in one instant it could be over.”

The case has triggered a nationwide debate about Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, race and racial profiling.

“People care about gun rights. People care about race. People care about children. People care about the right to defend yourself,” said CNN legal analyst Sunny Hostin. “And this case has all of them wrapped up together, and that’s rare.”

Zimmerman’s lawyer, Mark O’Mara, told CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” that regardless of the outcome, his client will forever be looking over his shoulder:

“First of all, my client will never be safe, because there are a percentage of the population who are angry, they’re upset, and they may well take it out on him,” he said. “So, he’ll never be safe.”

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NEWCOMERSTOWN — An eastern Ohio school district will allow some employees to carry guns on school property beginning this fall.

The Newcomerstown Exempted Village School District board las month approved a policy authorizing employees designated by the board and superintendent to carry guns.

The district released few details of the plan that will go into effect in the coming school year. Board President Jerry Lahmers says it would be counterproductive if the general public knew how many people were authorized to carry weapons or in which buildings they worked.

But he tells Channel 3 News that could include principals, teachers or other employees.

Lahmers says the change is a reaction to the mass killing at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut.

The Newcomerstown District has about 1,100 students in 4 buildings with 130 employees.

Only recently it adopted measures that are standard in many other schools.

Those include a buzz-in security system and requiring visitors to sign in at the door of school buildings.

The policy is being crafted with input from the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office, Newcomerstown’s Police Department and the Buckeye Firearms Association.

That group offered offered free firearms training to Ohio teachers and school personnel.

Those carrying guns must get tactical training and be recertified by the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Department annually. They also must have a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Schools officials say the policy should help keep students safe.

Lahmers said a parents’ group recommended the new gun policy.

But some students expressed reservations about the dangers of guns in schools to Channel 3 News.

At least one other school system in Ohio has adopted a policy of giving employees access to guns.

Sidney Schools, north of Dayton, are forming a response team of employees who will have be able to get to to handguns stored in safes in school buildings.

The Newcomerstown plan raises possible questions about insurance coverage.

Insurance providers in the state of Kansas have balked at covering school systems that arm employees.

Lahmers says discussion are continuing with Newcomerstown Schools’ insurance company.

He believes the firm is interested in and favorably views additional steps that increase security.

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Congress returns to Washington this week to face several key issues including the farm bill, student loans and immigration reform – topics expected to create tension between and among Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate.

The Democrat-controlled Senate reached a bipartisan deal late last month to pass sweeping legislation on immigration reform. But the bill faces a more uncertain future in the Republican-led House, where security along the U.S.-Mexico border remains a major concern.

The contentious issue about how secure borders must be before giving some of the country’s 11 million illegal immigrants a path to citizenship resurfaced Sunday when Idaho Republican Rep. Raul Labrador expressed his concern.

Labrador, a Tea Party favorite and immigration lawyer, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that illegal immigration has to be cut by a “large percentage” before such legislation can pass, considering a continued influx on non-citizens amid a new law would hurt the Republican base and cause Hispanics to “lose faith in us.”

He also implied a new Congressional Budget Office report showing the final Senate bill that which would cut illegal immigration by as much as half was not enough.

Conservatives from safe House districts have rebuffed appeals from Republicans who argue immigration overhaul will boost the party’s political standing with Hispanics and others in the increasingly diverse electorate, especially in the 2016 presidential election.

However, conservatives strongly oppose any legislation offering legalization to immigrants living here illegally.

House Speaker John Boehner and other Republicans have said the Senate bill is a nonstarter in their chamber. Boehner also has recently suggested he’ll follow the will of the chamber’s Republican majority, not the majority of House members that would include Democrats, when deciding whether to call for a vote on immigration.

Republicans plan to discuss their next steps at a private meeting Wednesday.

The House Judiciary Committee has adopted a piecemeal approach to immigration reform — approving a series of bills but none with the path to citizenship that President Obama and fellow Democrats are seeking.

A more pressing concern for some lawmakers is the fate of the five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill.

The House last month rejected the bill, with 62 Republicans voting no after Boehner urged support for the measure.

House conservatives wanted cuts deeper than $2 billion annually, or about 3 percent, in the almost $80 billion-a-year food stamp program. Democrats were furious with a last-minute amendment that would have added additional work requirements to food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said an extension of the current farm law, passed in 2008, is unlikely and is pressing the House to pass his chamber’s version of the bill. The current policy expires Sept. 30.

Congress also must figure out what to do about interest rates on college student loans, which on July 1 doubled from 4.3 percent because of partisan wrangling in the Senate.

Republicans want the rates on the federally funded Stafford loans tied to market factors, saying politicians toying with the rates creates uncertainty among students and their families.

Democrats say poor and middle-class students cannot afford to have the rates return to the pre-2007 level of 6.8 percent, which would increase the average cost of a loan by $2,600. And they say Republicans, when trying to improve the economy, should instead look at closing tax loopholes for the wealthy.

A compromise in the form of a one-year extension on the rate could be reached before school starts in the fall and new loans begin.

The cooperation in the Senate during the passage of the immigration bill could be wiped out immediately if Reid, frustrated with GOP delaying tactics on judges and nominations, tries to change the chamber rules by scrapping the current three-fifths majority for a simple majority.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated it’s a decision Reid could regret if the Republicans seizes Senate control in next year’s elections.

Democrats in 2014 will have to defend 21 seats, compared to 14 for Republicans.

McConnell envisioned a long list of reversals from the Democratic agenda, from repealing Obama’s health care law to shipping radioactive nuclear waste to Yucca Mountain in Reid’s home state of Nevada.

In addition, recently elected Democrats have clamored for changes in Senate rules as Obama has faced Republican resistance to his nominations.

The GOP has, for example, challenged Obama’s three judicial nominees to the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Congress also faces political and economic fights over the budget, with the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and Congress plodding through spending bills with no sign of being done on time.

In addition to legislation to keep the government running, Congress probably will have to vote on whether to raise the nation’s borrowing authority, a politically fraught vote that roiled the markets in August 2009.

Three Senate committees will consider Obama nominees for major national security positions this month, confirmation hearings certain to set off a political dust-up over the president’s policies.

Questions about the administration’s policy toward Syria and plans to arm the rebels in their civil war with President Bashar Assad’s forces will dominate the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the re-nomination of Gen. Martin Dempsey for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The hearing is scheduled for July 18.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to hold a hearing on Samantha Power, the president’s pick for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and a subcommittee meets July 11 to consider the nomination of Victoria Nuland for assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs.

That posting typically wouldn’t draw a great deal of attention, but senators are certain to press Nuland about her work on the widely debunked talking points about the deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed in the Sept. 11 attack last year.

Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at that time, used the talking points five days after the attack, blaming the assault on a spontaneous protest over an anti-Islamic video.

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ATLANTA — The Atlanta school board has approved having at least one full-time Atlanta Police Department officer patrolling the halls of every middle school and high school.

Deputy Superintendent Larry Hoskins told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution the police will build relationships with students and work to identify discipline problems before they become criminal matters.

“They’ll get to, literally every day, engage the students and teachers, learning about them,” Sgt. Gregory Lyon said.

The 55 officers will replace a less organized group of about 235 part-time, off-duty officers who moved from school to school and didn’t always work full school days.

Lyon said the permanent officers will be like police working a beat, except their beat will be a school instead of a neighborhood.

“Off-duty jobs are off-duty. They’re secondary. The officers working here, this will be their primary duty and function,” Lyon said.

The 55 officers will be distributed among 30 middle and high schools, and the officers will be required to go through training on how to work with students.

The transition to more structured policing comes after several shootings and fights during the last year, including a Grady High School student who accidentally shot herself in the leg and a Price Middle School student who was shot in the neck.

Atlanta Public Schools had considered creating its own independent police force — similar to what is in place in Gwinnett, DeKalb and Fulton counties — but instead decided to continue working with the Atlanta Police Department.

Dedicated police officers do a better job than off-duty police who work with students on the side, said Kevin Quinn, president of the National
Association of School Resource Officers.

“Part-time officers don’t have a knowledge of what they’re supposed to do on campus other than being a hired gun,” he told the newspaper.

Atlanta’s safety and security costs are budgeted to increase about $700,000 next school year to $10.1 million, in part because the school system will be responsible for the officers’ benefits compensation and the school system is adding the equivalent of two full-time officers, Hoskins said.

Full-time officers will be in high schools when school starts Aug. 7. Middle schools will continue using part-time officers until Jan. 1 and then will switch to full-time officers, he said.

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On Friday, June 28, 2013 at 12:04pm, Maryland State Trooper K. Baker responded to the Best Buy Store at Worth Avenue, in California for a reported theft.

The Trooper made contact with the loss prevention officer, who reported that a large number of cell phones were stolen between January 2013 and June 28, 2013.

The loss prevention team began an investigation, and uncovered video footage of a suspect stealing cell phones. On June 28, 2013, the loss prevention officer showed the suspect, Justin Hurt, the video. Hurt admitted stealing the cell phones on the video plus others. He provided the loss prevention officer a written statement and identified the phones he had stolen on the loss prevention record.

In all Hunt admitted to stealing 29 cellphones and a blu-ray disc player, the total value was $18,162.53.

Justin M. Hurt, 24, of Callaway was arrested and charged with Theft Greater than $10,000 but less than $100,000.

Mr. Hurt was transported to the St. Mary’s County Detention Center where he was charged and held pending a bond review with the District Court Commissioner.

Hurt posted a bail of $7,500 the same day and was released.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Several times every day, at airports across the country, passengers are trying to walk through security with loaded guns in their carry-on bags, purses or pockets, even in a boot. And, more than a decade after 9/11 raised consciousness about airline security, it’s happening a lot more often.

In the first six months of this year, Transportation Security Administration screeners found 894 guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags, a 30 percent increase over the same period last year. The TSA set a record in May for the most guns seized in one week — 65 in all, 45 of them loaded and 15 with bullets in the chamber and ready to be fired. That was 30 percent more than the previous record of 50 guns, set just two weeks earlier.

Last year TSA found 1,549 firearms on passengers attempting to go through screening, up 17 percent from the year before.

In response to a request from The Associated Press, the agency provided figures on the number of firearm incidents in 2011 and 2012 for all U.S. airports, as well as the number of passengers screened at each airport. The AP analyzed the data, as well as weekly blog reports from the agency on intercepted guns from this year and last year.

TSA didn’t keep statistics on guns intercepted before 2011, but officials have noticed an upward trend in recent years, said spokesman David Castelveter.

Some of the details make officials shake their heads.

As one passenger took off his jacket to go through screening in Sacramento, Calif., last year, TSA officers noticed he was wearing a shoulder holster, and in it was a loaded 9 mm pistol. The same passenger was found to have three more loaded pistols, 192 rounds of ammunition, two magazines and three knives.

Screeners elsewhere found a .45-caliber pistol and magazine hidden inside a cassette deck. Another .45-caliber pistol loaded with seven rounds, including a round in the chamber, was hidden under the lining of a carry-on bag in Charlotte, N.C. A passenger in Allentown, Pa., was carrying a pistol designed to look like a writing pen. At first the passenger said it was just a pen, but later acknowledged it was a gun, according to TSA.

A passenger in March at Bradley Hartford International Airport in Connecticut had a loaded .38-caliber pistol containing eight rounds strapped to his lower left leg. At Salt Lake City International Airport, a gun was found inside a passenger’s boot strapped to a prosthetic leg.

TSA doesn’t believe these gun-toting passengers are terrorists, but the agency can’t explain why so many passengers try to board planes with guns, either, Castelveter said. The most common excuse offered by passengers is “I forgot it was there.”

“We don’t analyze the behavioral traits of people who carry weapons. We’re looking for terrorists,” he said. “But sometimes you have to scratch your head and say, ‘Why?’”

Many passengers found to have guns by screeners are arrested, but not all. It depends on the gun laws where the airport is located. If the state or jurisdiction where the airport is located has tolerant gun laws, TSA screeners will frequently hand the gun back to the passenger and recommend locking it in a car or finding some other safe place for it. The government doesn’t track what happens to the people who are arrested.

Is it plausible that some people are so used to carrying guns that they simply forget that they have them, even when they’re at an airport about to walk through a scanner? Or do some people try to bring their guns with them when they fly because they think they won’t get caught?

Jimmy Taylor, a sociology professor at Ohio University-Zanesville and the author of several books on the nation’s gun culture, said some gun owners are so used to carrying concealed weapons that it’s no different to them than carrying keys or a wallet.

The most common reason people say they carry guns is for protection, so it also makes sense that most of the guns intercepted by TSA are loaded, Taylor said. Many gun owners keep their weapons loaded so they’re ready if needed, he said.

Even so, Taylor said he finds it hard to believe airline passengers forget they’re carrying guns.

“My wife and I check on things like eye drops and Chapstick to see if we’re allowed to take them on a plane, so it’s a little difficult to imagine that you aren’t checking the policies about your loaded firearm before you get to the airport,” he said.

Occasionally passengers stopped by TSA are people who are used to carrying guns because they work in law enforcement, security or the military, but that doesn’t appear to be the case most of the time.

Robert Spitzer, an expert on gun policy and gun rights, theorizes that for some, the “I forgot” answer is an excuse, “just like somebody who walks out of a store with an unpaid-for item in their pocket. The first thing that person will say is, ‘I forgot.’ Do people forget sometimes? Sure they do. But are there also people who try to shoplift to get away with something? Sure there are, and I think that’s no less true with guns.”

Eighty-five percent of the guns intercepted last year were loaded. The most common type of gun was a .38-caliber pistol.

Airports in the South and the West, where the American gun culture is strongest, had the greatest number of guns intercepted, according to TSA data.

Of the 12 airports with the most guns last year, five are in Texas: Dallas-Fort Worth International, 80 guns; George Bush Intercontinental in Houston, 52; Dallas Love Field, 37; William P. Hobby in Houston, 35, and Austin-Bergstrom International, 33. Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta had the most for any airport, at 96. Others include Phoenix Sky Harbor, 54; Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International in Florida, 42; Denver International, 39; Seattle-Tacoma International, 37; Orlando International Airport in Florida, 36, and Tampa International in Florida, 33.

When expressed as a proportion of airport traffic volume, small airports in the West and South led the way. The airport in Roswell, N.M., had 8.5 guns intercepted per 100,000 passengers last year; Cedar City, Utah, and Provo, Utah, both 6.5; Longview, Texas, 4.9; Dickinson, N.D., 4; Joplin, Mo., 3.8; Twin Falls, Idaho, 3.4; Fort Smith, Ark., 3.3, and Walla Walla, Wash., and Elko, Nev., both 2.9.

By contrast, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, where TSA screened nearly 27 million passengers last year, there was a single passenger found to have a gun.

“There are some Americans who believe that there are no limits, that they not only have a constitutional but a God-given right to have a gun and ‘By gosh, if I want to bring a gun on a plane I’m going to do it,’” said Spitzer, a professor at the State University of New York-Cortland.

TSA’s count of guns intercepted doesn’t include all the other kinds of prohibited “guns” that TSA screeners find, like flare guns, BB guns, air guns, spear guns, pellet guns and starter pistols. Screeners find half a dozen to several dozen stun guns on passengers or in their carry-on bags each week. Last December, screeners stopped a passenger in Boston with seven stun guns in his bag. He said they were Christmas presents. The same week, screeners spotted 26 stun guns in the carry-on bag of a passenger at JFK. TSA has found several stun guns disguised as smartphones, and one that looked like a package of cigarettes.

Passengers are allowed to take guns with them when they fly, but only as checked baggage. They are required to fill out a form declaring the weapons and to carry them in a hard-sided bag with a lock.

Most of those who are stopped with guns are reluctant to talk about it afterward. One who didn’t mind was Raymond Whitehead, 53, of Santa Fe, N.M., who was arrested at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey in May after screeners spotted 10 hollow-point bullets in his carry-on bag. Whitehead, who is completely blind, also had a .38 caliber Charter Arms revolver in his checked bag that he had failed to declare. He said in an interview with the AP that he was unaware of the specifics of the rules for checking guns, or that hollow-point bullets are illegal in New Jersey.

Whitehead acknowledged that it seems “counterintuitive” for a blind man to have a gun but said he keeps a loaded gun handy for protection from intruders. In such a situation, he said, he would call out a warning that he had a gun and spray bullets in the direction of the noise if the intruder didn’t leave.

“I have five shots, and if I fan it out I’m going to hit you,” said Whitehead, a National Rifle Association member who owns five guns.

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Organized theft rings have found a new way to get quick cash for stolen merchandise by returning those items to retail stores for easily transferable gift cards, experts said.

Local law enforcement officials said they have seen signs of such activity in some parts of southwest Ohio.

Nearly 78 percent of U.S. retailers report they have been victims of store merchandise credit scams, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2013 Organized Retail Crime survey.

Experienced thieves, known as “boosters,” steal merchandise and return it without a receipt for the sole purpose of receiving store credit via a gift card. They then sell those gift cards for cash on the secondary market, such as discount gift card websites, pawn shops, check-cashing stores and automated kiosks.

“The new trend is disturbing in that these thieves are now making better return on their time stealing merchandise,” said Richard Mellor, the retail federation’s vice president of loss prevention. Boosters can get as much as 90 percent of full retail value, plus sales tax, via gift card fraud, as opposed to pennies on the dollar by selling the items to a fence — a person who acts as a conduit of stolen goods, he said.

Organized criminal enterprises have boosters getting the gift cards through merchandise credit fraud and are now selling those cards in bulk, Mellor said.

Cash from gift card fraud can be used to fuel drug habits and fund terrorism, said Gordon Gough, executive vice president of the Ohio Council of Retail Merchants.

“Before it was kind of a casual theft where somebody would steal something, turn it in and then maybe buy something else in the store or sell it on the street,” Gough said. “But now this has become a market online where people can sell these cards,” he said.

Industry experts and law enforcement officials estimate that organized retail crime costs retailers $30 billion annually. A dollar loss figure related to gift card fraud is not yet available, Mellor said.

Lost revenue from such crimes can result in less inventory and fewer employees for retailers, and higher prices for consumers, according to federation officials.

Retailers nationwide began reporting the trend over the last 12 to 18 months after business statistics indicated an increase in gift cards issued for returns without a receipt, as well as familiar faces and names associated with those returns.

“They started pointing to we’ve got a bigger fraud problem that we realized,” Mellor said.

Beavercreek police Capt. Jeff Fiorita said he has seen a recent pattern of gift card fraud incidents in his jurisdiction, which includes both The Greene Town Center and the Mall at Fairfield Commons.

Fiorita said the thieves will take something off a local store shelf, return it for in-store credit, and then go to a different store location and use the gift card to buy something of similar value. They will then return that item with a receipt to receive the full value in cash.

“I don’t know if it is anything that is related to a large scheme or a large-scale theft ring,” Fiorita said. “Most of these are typically independent folks that we catch.”

Miami Twp. police Sgt. Jay Phares said gift card fraud is nothing new in the area that includes the Dayton Mall, but he hasn’t seen any recent spikes in activity.

Cincinnati Premium Outlets has had issues with roaming bands of shoplifters, “but we have not had that problem so far that I know of,” said Monroe police Lt. Frank Robinson.

Management officials at several area shopping malls declined comment because they lacked information about their tenants’ retail transactions. Loss prevention managers at several large retail stores also declined comment.

Mellor said the trend is “troubling” for retailers because it allows thieves to bypass traditional store security measures such as locked cases and electronic tags for expensive, frequently targeted items like watches, jewelry, designer handbags and electronics.

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The security lines at many airports are long and slow, and it looks like the Transportation Safety Administration agrees.

The government agency has begun a pilot program using dogs to pre-screen passengers in security lines in an effort to hasten the pace of travel.

Most prominently at Denver International Airport, the dogs are in a trial at a few airports around the country. TSA agents are patrolling security lines and using the bomb sniffing pooches to clear people for expedited trips through security without removing shoes, emptying bags or dreaded pat downs, according to the agency.

Travelers, predictably, love zipping through lines in a fraction of the time they are prepared to wait.

‘If it makes it safer, I’m okay with it,’ one passenger told CBS Denver.

The use of dogs, for now, is randomized and limited to specific areas of the airports, and not all passengers will be screened with the canines, according to the station.

‘I’d be wiling to do something like that if it made me get through faster,’ another passenger told the station.

An aviation expert told the station that the dogs are very effective at finding explosives, adding ‘the only reason we take off our shoes and do all that over stuff is because the other machinery really doesn’t know how to look at it. So this makes a lot of sense for everybody.’

The program is also being piloted in Honolulu, Indianapolis and Tampa, according to the TSA.

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A measure that allows people with handgun carry permits to store firearms in their vehicles no matter where they are parked is among a number of new state laws that take effect today.

The gun law will go into effect despite questions about what it means for employment law in Tennessee — the measure allows workers to store guns in cars while parked in their employers’ parking lots.

The state attorney general said in a legal opinion released in May that under the law, employers still would be allowed to fire workers who violate gun bans.

Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey disagreed with the opinion, saying in a statement that the “General Assembly created a clear statutory right allowing permit holders to lawfully keep a firearm stored in their car while at work.”

“Any employer explicitly terminating a permit holder for keeping a gun locked in his car would violate the state’s clear public policy, opening himself or herself up to legal action,” the Blountville Republican said.

Joan Beruber, like other Middle Tennesseans, fear the repercussions the new law may bring.

“People love guns here, and there are just a lot of accidental shootings,” she said. “There is always going to be someone that can fly off the handle and just start shooting.”

Other measures taking effect include a law that allows school districts to let people with police training be armed in schools, and one that would require incoming students at public higher education institutions to show proof they’ve had meningitis shots.

The safety measure gives schools the option to hire retired law enforcement officers after they meet certain requirements, such as completing a 40-hour school security course.

It also makes information about which teachers are armed or which schools allow guns confidential to anyone but law enforcement.

Gov. Bill Haslam included $34 million in his budget for local government officials to use on their priorities, which could include additional security measures for schools.

Jim Wrye, chief lobbyist for the Tennessee Education Association, said the new law will benefit financially strapped school districts, particularly those in rural areas.

“It’s a way that school systems can now determine ways to expand their security options,” he said. “And for our members across the state, that was an inherently good thing.”

The vaccination law is named after Middle Tennessee State University freshman Jacob Nunley, who died less than 24 hours after contracting meningococcal meningitis in 2012. The contagious disease is a bacterial infection of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord.

Currently, MTSU and most other public colleges and universities in Tennessee recommend but don’t require the vaccination.

Chris Wilson, Nunley’s uncle, believes his nephew would be alive today had the law been in place.

“If MTSU had been a school that required it, there’s not a doubt in our minds that Jacob would still be here today,” he said.

Another new law will cut a weekly $15-per-child allowance that was going to Tennesseans drawing unemployment benefits.

The Department of Labor and Workforce Development said the change will help bolster the state unemployment trust fund, which could lead to a reduction in unemployment taxes paid by businesses.

According to the department’s projections, ending the allowance for dependent children in the budget year beginning July 1 will save the state $40 million per year.

Lawmakers created the child allowance in 2009 in order to qualify for a nearly $142 million federal stimulus grant. Now that that money has been spent, the Republican-controlled Legislature earlier this year passed a bill to end the program.

Advocates for low-income families oppose the change.

“Over 150,000 kids in Tennessee live in a household where one or both parents are unemployed and looking for work,” said Chris Coleman, an attorney with the Tennessee Justice Center. “The Legislature’s decision to take money away from these children will only increase the financial strain on these already-struggling families. That’s not what I call family values.”

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