Texas Teachers With Guns? Newtown, Connecticut School Shooting Sparks Gun Proposals
Texas teachers could be armed with guns following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.
Just four days after 20 first graders and six adults were gunned down in the Newtown school, Texas Gov. Rick Perry expressed support for allowing school districts to determine whether teachers can carry concealed handguns in class.
It has also been reported that one Texas district already permits its teachers to carry concealed handguns in class. But the governor has now said he is open to that being rolled out more widespread in other schools.
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Perry told the NE Tarrant County Tea Party on Monday evening, "In the state of Texas, if you go through the process, have been trained, and you are a handgun-licensed individual, you should be able to carry a gun anywhere in the state," according to ABC News affiliate WFAA-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth.
In addition, Virginia Gov. McDonnell said in a radio program today, "I know there's been a knee-jerk reaction against that. I think there should at least be a discussion of that. If people were armed, not just a police officer but other school officials who were trained and chose to have a weapon, certainly there would have been an opportunity to stop aggressors coming into the schools. So I think that's a reasonable discussion that ought to be had."
In the Harrold Independent School District in Texas, a policy was already implemented in 2007 that allows teachers to carry concealed handguns in schools.
Harrold superintendent, David Thweatt, has said "We're a rural community. We're in a county about a little smaller than the state of Rhode of island, so we're 30 minutes from law enforcement. Thirty minutes is an extremely long length of time," according to ABC News.
In Connecticut last week, 20 year old Adam Lanza shot his mother dead, shooting her four times. He then drove to the nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, where he broke his way in before shooting 20 first grade children as well as six adults in the school. All of his victims were shot multiple times, with some children said to have been shot as many as 11 times.
After the slaughter, Lanza turned the gun on himself and shot himself dead, according to reports. It was one of the worst high school massacre shootings in United States history and has sparked a wide debate on gun regulations in the country.
