Texas schools could send teachers to gun training courses as soon as this summer under a school safety plan Gov. Greg Abbott introduced last week. Abbott made the recommendations in response to the May 18 school shooting at Santa Fe High School, just south of Houston.
Some of the ideas detailed in the 43-page report require changes to state laws and would necessitate a special session of the Texas legislature, but schools can implement some proposed measures immediately.
Other recommendations include stiffening security at school entrances by installing metal detectors or adding vestibules with remote lock systems so that visitors can’t just walk in.
Critics of the plan questioned its lack of gun restrictions.
“The answer to preventing school shootings isn’t some deep-seated secret. It’s guns. It’s the fact that it’s frighteningly easy for dangerous people to get access to a gun, and this proposal does little to stop that,” said Kris Brown, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Texas has 1.2 million people licensed to carry handguns, but 85 percent of school shooters didn’t purchase their own firearm. Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who is accused of killing 10 people in Santa Fe, allegedly used a shotgun and .38-caliber revolver that belonged to his father.
Abbott’s plan proposes some gun control measures, including a “red flag” law, similar to legislation recently passed in Florida, Vermont, and Maryland. The measure would allow law enforcement, family members, and others to file requests to remove firearms from a potentially dangerous person. Another reform would require firearm owners to report a lost or stolen gun within 10 days.
Other measures take the focus off guns entirely. Abbott recommends training people to identify symptoms of mental illness and wants to expand a program that identifies and helps students at risk of committing violence.
In his plan, Abbott advocates bolstering a program to put guns in the hands of teachers. Adults have succeeded in thwarting or mitigating two school shootings in the past month. An armed school resource officer shot a would-be attacker in Dixon, Ill., and a teacher tackled a gunman in Noblesville, Ind. Fifty-four percent of Texas parents with children in public schools support the idea of arming teachers, and an unnamed Santa Fe High School senior quoted in Abbott’s report also spoke up about it.
“Arming teachers, and not knowing who is armed, that is what we need,” she said.
Schooled 
Comments
Laura W
Posted: Thu, 06/07/2018 11:29 amWell, metal detectors at school entrances sounds like a good place to start. It does seem rather a shame that we can afford so much inconvenience and expense to have all sorts of safety measures in our airports, but most schools don't even have something that basic.
phillipW
Posted: Thu, 06/07/2018 12:17 pmGuns are already illegal in schools, airports, and many other public places. Passing new gun restriction laws won't solve anything. I'm really not sure what agenda the gun restriction lobbyists really have, other than the ultimate goal of banning all firearms. Go ahead and put that plan into place, assuring that the only people who will then have firearms, are the people currently shooting up the schools, and other such criminals. I believe that's what currently goes on in Communist China, where people are arrested every day by herds of police, who have been trained to place no value on human life, and where the judicial system just simply puts people in jail, who may never get a trial, and may never get out. The "children" and the "immature" and "uneducated" are currently controlling the firearms conversation in this country. Oh, you can call them the news media if you'd like - same people. They seriously don't think this thing through logically, do they?
Midwest preacher
Posted: Sat, 06/09/2018 06:03 amWe need to protect our kids. Making guns illegal will not do that. It would make sense to try to do something that would work instead of pursuing a political agenda based on irrational fear.