(The Center Square) – California Assemblyman Bill Essayli has proposed a bill that would require every school in the state to have armed school resource officers on campus. Essayli introduced this bill shortly after two Kindergarteners were shot on the playground at their school in Oroville.
“Yesterday, two innocent children were shot in cold blood,” reads a statement from Essayli. “This is not a time for empty rhetoric, it is a time for action. Accordingly, today I introduced AB 68 to mandate every school in California have an Armed School Resource Officer on campus during school hours. As elected officials we have a sacred duty to protect our most vulnerable citizens from this harm, this includes our children at school.”
The Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco affirmed this statement, noting that there could have been a faster response if the school had a school resource officer.
“We need armed officers at our schools,” Bianco said in a statement. “Yesterday is a perfect example of the tragic consequence of not having an officer immediately available to intervene when two innocent boys were shot on campus. We need to take action now before more lives and families are destroyed. As Sheriff of Riverside County, I don’t play politics with public safety. I urge the politicians in Sacramento to do the same. We need to pass AB 68, a common sense bill that will protect our school and our children.”
The two boys were shot on Dec. 4 at Feather River Adventist School and remain in critical condition. The suspect of the shooting committed suicide after injuring the boys. While Essayli proposed this bill in response to the shooting, Feather River Adventist School is a private school and AB 68 will not apply to private schools.
“It does not apply to private schools, but this bill will set the standard for how we protect schools,” reads a comment by Essayli on X. “There is nothing stopping private schools from implementing the same policy.”
Essayli proposed this legislation in the last legislative session – AB 3038 – but this was killed in the Assembly Education Committee in April after lack of support from Democrats.