The Moscow City Duma plans to introduce a bill at the State Duma that would equip security guards at schools and kindergartens with electroshock weapons, as safety concerns arose in the wake of a deadly school shooting on Monday.
The legislature's security committee will review possible amendments to federal laws that would outfit school entrances with metal detectors and would arm school guards sufficiently to allow them to "stop the criminals, who currently view them as doormen," the committee's deputy head Sergei Goncharov said, Izvestia reported.
The bill will then be submitted to the State Duma, he said.
"People who stay on guard at school entrances have only a pen and a notebook," Goncharov said. "They have no self-defense weapons."
Head of the Civil Security organization Sergei Grinin said that only armed police posts could ensure safety at the country's schools — a measure that would require substantial budget expenditures, but no new laws.
Concerns about gun control have flared up after a boy thought to be 15 years old took students hostage and killed a geography teacher and police officer at a Moscow school on Monday, Russia's first such attack.
Underscoring the abundance of unregistered weapons in the Moscow region, the Interior Ministry said that police have detained a retiree who kept 16 handguns in his home, Interfax reported on Tuesday.
The 70-year-old pensioner, who had a prior criminal record on gun-related charges, also kept a cache of ammunition in his home in the town of Odintsovo, west of the capital, Interior Ministry spokesman Andrei Galiakberov said.
In the wake of the shooting, a bill has been submitted to the State Duma proposing restrictions on the sale of violent video games.
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