WASHINGTON — In the debate over how to protect children in classrooms across the nation, one group said security should be left to police school resource officers.

Mac Hardy, director of operations for the National Association of School Resource Officers, said teachers shouldn’t have to shoulder the added responsibility of taking on an active shooter. When it comes to teachers, he said, “We want them there to educate our children. We don’t want them having to think about having a gunbattle.”

No one doubts the willingness of teachers to put themselves in harm’s way, Hardy said, but that having to manage and secure firearms while handling the day to day job of educating a room full of students splits a teacher’s focus.

The level of training that a teacher would have to undergo would likely be burdensome, he added. “When you bring a gun into a school in the proximity of hundreds and hundreds of people in a very crowded place, you have to be well-trained,” Hardy said.

Hardy also sees possible conflict for teachers who take on the role of facing down an armed intruder. “Anything you fire out of that gun is your responsibility,” he said.

As a former teacher and a 20-year veteran school resource officer, Hardy said that thought was never far from his mind. “I had to think about it every day I put my uniform on,” he said.

School resource officers are employed differently in many school systems across the country. But a common approach for dealing with mass shootings has evolved since the Columbine High School shooting in 1999. Instead of waiting for backup, Hardy said, school resource officers are trained to confront the shooter.

“We have to stop it or we know that further carnage is going to take place,” he said.

But in the most recent school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, there have been reports that the school’s resource officer, Broward County deputy Scot Peterson, failed to act. Instead of moving toward the shooter, Peterson allegedly stayed outside the school while the attack continued, uninterrupted.

Hardy said he can’t comment on that. “We did not train in that county, so I don’t have firsthand knowledge” of the deputy’s actions, but he said the current strategy is to take on a shooter.

Could an officer with a sidearm take on an attacker with an AR-15, like the weapon used in a number of mass shootings? Hardy said when in close quarters, the edge that the shooter with an AR-15 has is reduced. At close range, he explained, “There’s not much of a difference between the AR and a semi-automatic handgun. But at distance, that’s where the problems come in.”