Project’s origins tied to 2024 pitch by Pennsylvania company for exclusive contract
By TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — The Kansas Legislature’s special budget committee revealed the attorney general’s office continues to work toward awarding a $10 million contract to a private vendor for deployment of artificial intelligence and use of security cameras to spot gun-wielding intruders in public schools.
Gov. Laura Kelly signed a budget bill in April that included funding for technology that promised to identify unconcealed firearms in school buildings so alerts could be forwarded to school staff and law enforcement officers. In October, three companies submitted bids through the Kansas Department of Administration. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Kris Kobach said a contract hadn’t been issued.
Under state law, the attorney general’s office was directed to make certain the system was installed in schools by the end of December and operational at the close of February.
Sen. Pat Pettey, a Democrat from Kansas City, Kansas, said the initiative was embraced by the Legislature at the same time a popular program offering state-funded school-security grants to districts was dropped.
“We no longer have funding in the Department of Education for safe and secure schools,” Pettey said. “But we do have this funding source … but nothing has been appropriated? Schools would like to have safe and secure funds, but they don’t have any option now except through this program.”
Bids on the Kansas firearm-identification contract were submitted by Gades Sales Co. of Wichita; CIS Data Services of Springfield, Missouri; and ZeroEyes of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. Financial details of those company proposals haven’t been made public.
The idea of relying on AI to pinpoint unconcealed weapons in schools and possibly thwart mass shootings has been debated in Kansas since ZeroEyes hired lobbyists last year to convince legislators to award it the contract to operate an enhanced security system for benefit of Kansas schools.
Lobbyists for ZeroEyes pitched the idea of directly earmarking state funding to ZeroEyes or establishing contract provisions matching ZeroEyes’ marketing materials so rival venders would have difficulty landing the contract.
Kieran Carroll, chief strategy officer for ZeroEyes, told a Kansas House committee in February 2024 that covering 1,300 school buildings in Kansas with ZeroEyes’ technology and delivering 24-hour monitoring of two dozen cameras in each school would cost the state $8.5 million annually.
In May 2024, Gov. Laura Kelly used line-item authority to veto the budget measure dedicating $5 million to a gun-identification initiative that favored ZeroEyes. The bill limited dollar-for-dollar matches from the state to school districts that signed up with ZeroEyes.
The governor said the result would have been “a no-bid contract” that wrote ZeroEyes’ technology into state law without proper consideration of alternative companies.
The Republican-led Legislature responded during the 2025 session by authorizing expenditure of $10 million for a firearm-detection program available to all Kansas public school districts. This version of the AI funding plan wasn’t vetoed by Kelly and led to the ongoing contract bidding process.