Is there a change in armed teachers?

That’s the question conservative lawmakers often ask after the school hunt.

And on Tuesday, Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, suggested in an interview with Newsmaxthe right-wing news outlet, that having “trained teachers and other administrators armed” would save lives.

He repeated his point in an interview with FoxNews.

The senator Ted CruzR-Texas, told CNN that restrictions on gun rights are not effective in stopping shootings.

Instead, Cruz pushed for further campus implementation.

“We know from past experience that one of the most effective tools to keep children safe is to use armed law on campus. “

After making a passionate and sad plea to his colleagues for stricter gun control measures, Sen. objected. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., The idea of ​​armed personnel in places like the school yard.

Murphy was a young representative during the elementary school massacre Sandy Hook in NewtownConn., In 2012.

Representative Dean Phillips, D-Minn., Criticized the idea of ​​more weapons on campus.

“I own a gun,” Phillips wrote on Twitter.

“Don’t tell me that our Founders conceived this massacre when they wrote the Constitution. Don’t tell me they can tolerate this madness. Don’t tell me teachers have to be armed. And don’t tell me to me that your AR15 is more important than the lives of 14 other children. ”

Within hours after the hunt, Democrats moved to clean up the way to force votes that would boost background checks for gun buyers.

Debate

The debate on the training and arming of educators, guards and others is a lightning rod in the school safety strategy.

“The only thing that stops a bad person with a gun he was a good man with a gun, ”said Wayne LaPierre, a senior National Rifle Association official, after the hunt on Sandy Hook.

Most law enforcement experts argue that teachers must not carry a weapon because they lack the tactical knowledge to handle them.

That idea resurfaced in 2018, after a former student killed 17 people and injured 17 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

State lawmakers passed legislation to restrict gun rights but also removed the ban on arming teachers in the classroom despite vocal opposition from gun control advocates.

Teachers can carry weapons through a program created after the shot.

The largest group of teachers in the country is opposed to building their range.

In 2018, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said the response from 60,000 teachers after the Parkland shooting was “universal, even from educators who own guns:

teachers don’t want to be armed, we want to teach, ”Weingarten said.

“We don’t want to be, and we will never have the experience to be, snipers. Not much training can prepare an armed master to take an AR-15. “

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