Seventeen years ago, Colorado was horrified at the massacre at Columbine High School, where 12 students and one educator were shot and killed. Families who sent their children off to study in the morning spent terrifying hours awaiting word of their survival. Twelve never heard those words of relief.

A sad and misdirected marking of this anniversary is the news that security personnel at Douglas County Public Schools will soon be armed with Bushmaster AR-15 semi-automatic rifles, assault weapons. The shooter in the Sandy Hook School Massacre employed a Bushmaster AR-15 when he shot and killed 20 children and six educators.

Although the word is that the assault weapons will not be routinely deployed, the district has now escalated its weaponry to that of a war zone. These weapons were invented to kill the maximum number of people rapidly. They have been used in mass shootings with spray shooting, but they can also be used in a manner to be highly accurate. Problems with introduction of these weapons:

School shooters are usually students or alumni of the very schools they attack and are often dealing with anger or mental health issues. They are not hardened criminals; they are usually children. Shooting down a child at a school is indicative of a failure of the system. They need help, not a bullet. Rather than militarizing our schools, the district should be endeavoring to get help to these children.

The heart of the problem in school shootings is angry or disturbed children with easy access to lethal weapons. It is ironic that by the purchase of these firearms, Douglas County Public Schools is feeding the very industry that makes it near impossible to improve gun safety laws. This industry has consistently lobbied and worked against:

The decision to purchase these weapons, at over $12,000, was made by the security director, apparently without consultation with the district’s current school board, and perhaps without formal approval by the previous board. Meghann Silverthorn, a board member whose service spans both boards, said that the idea was discussed last summer and “the reason people found out about it is that someone was looking at our financial transparency website and got alarmed, like, ‘Whoa, what’s that?’” Silverthorn’s statement implies that the school board wasn’t being forthright with the public about its increase in the lethality of the armaments of its security personnel.

This action exposes the district to huge liabilities in the event of an accidental or errant shooting with one of these weapons. This escalation in weaponry, an action not taken by other school districts, should have been fully vetted by the school board with public input prior to the purchase.

Parents should question their school board as to this purchase, whether it is the right choice for their schools, and ask why there was not a full and open discussion with the real stakeholders of the district: the parents and their children.