S Dakota teachers allowed to be armed

Teachers and other schools staff in the US state of South Dakota are allowed to be armed in the schools under a law signed by the state’s governor.

On Friday, Gov. Dennis Daugaard signed the legislation that gives permission to the state’s school districts to arm teachers and other personnel as part of the so-called “school sentinel” programs.

According to the legislation, the programs would enable the school boards to arm people “to secure or enhance the deterrence of physical threat and defense of the school, its students, its staff, and members of the public on the school premises against violent attack.”

The law will take effect in July.

Supporters of the bill argue that it will prevent mass school shootings like December 2012 massacre in Connecticut. However, its opponents say that guns only make schools more hazardous.

On December 14, 2012, a 20-year-old man, identified as Adam Lanza, killed twenty children and six adults before pointing the gun at himself at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The US has an average of 87 deaths each day as a result of gun violence, with an average of 183 injured, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab and the Centers for Disease Control.

Every year, more than 30,000 people are shot and killed in the United States, and the year 2012 was a record-setting year for gun sales in the country. About 4.5 million firearms are sold annually in the US.