‘I don’t feel safe’: Beaufort Co. school board member calls for change to SC gun law
A Beaufort County school board member is calling for a change in state law that would allow her and other like-minded citizens to bring a concealed weapon to public meetings.
Rachel Wisnefski, who represents part of Bluffton, first raised the issue Monday at the Board of Education meeting, where she “vehemently” opposed a motion to end the board’s contract with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to provide security at meetings.
“I’m not planning on not coming home from one of these meetings,” Wisnefski said at the meeting. “I’ll state it on the record, I don’t feel safe.”
Although the board ultimately voted to continue having a deputy at its meetings, Wisnefski said she felt concerned by the proposal.
In an editorial first published to the political news site FitsNews.com, Wisnefski wrote: ““The removal of law enforcement at Board meetings — coupled with the SC Code prohibiting (concealed weapon permit) holders from carrying — would leave a public meeting absent any means of protection.”
On Monday, Wisnefski said that if the board’s contract with the sheriff’s office for meeting security ended, she wanted to “bring my weapon” to protect herself. She said she planned to write the editorial after seeing the topic on a draft of the board meeting agenda.
Wisnefski later acknowledged that state law prohibited her from bringing a firearm to public meetings, and said she wanted other security options available if the deputy is no longer there — especially since a deputy was not present at Monday’s meeting.
According to board member David Striebinger, who introduced the motion to end the contract, the district pays $45 an hour to have the deputy present, which adds up to $7,000 or $8,000 a year.
Striebinger stressed that the operations committee’s recommendation to end the contract was not motivated by cost.
“The reasoning was twofold,” he said. “One is there’s a very limited amount of things that law enforcement can do at meetings, as we know. The other is we don’t like the image of having law enforcement at a board of education meeting.”
Wisnefski pointed out in the editorial and at Monday’s board meeting that shootings had occurred at a 2010 school board meeting in Panama City, Fla., and a 2008 city council meeting in Kirkwood, Mo.
The shooter at the Panama City school board meeting was taken down by an armed school security guard and then took his own life. There were no other casualties.
The Kirkwood shooter killed two police officers, taking one officer’s gun and using it in the attack. Five died and two were wounded before the shooter was killed by police arriving to the scene.
Neither state changed its laws on firearms at public meetings as a result of these incidents.
In 2017, the board began contracting with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office to provide security at meetings just a few weeks after a verbal confrontation occurred between former board chairwoman Mary Cordray and current board member John Dowling, who at the time was a private citizen.
Wisnefski said Wednesday that she plans to speak to Beaufort County’s Legislative Delegation about the state code in the next few days.
This story was originally published September 25, 2019 at 4:24 PM.