Abbott plans school safety forum
Governor invites activists from both sides of gun debate as 3 days of talks begin Tuesday at Capitol.
Inviting advocates on opposing sides of the gun debate, Gov. Greg Abbott will kick off three days of roundtable discussions on school safety with a Tuesday event featuring districts that arm teachers or have partnerships with local police.
The hastily organized Capitol meetings, however, will be closed to the public and open to the media only at the beginning and end of the discussions.
Abbott said this week’s meetings, announced after eight students and two teachers were shot to Friday death at Santa Fe High School near Houston, will feature parents, teachers, students and lawmakers as well as experts in school safety, mental health and bullying. The governor also will hear from those
affected by school shootings in the Texas towns of Alpine, Italy and Santa Fe as well as November’s attack in a Sutherland Springs church that left 26 dead.
“I am seeking the best solu- tions to make our schools more secure and to keep our communities safe,” Abbott
said Monday in a prepared statement. “I look forward to hearing from all sides of the debate, and from expert per- spectives on these issues.”
Abbott expressed con- fidence that the meetings can lead to improved safety across Texas.
Others were not so sure, saying the discussions could provide the appearance of action with little or no substantive changes on gun avail- ability and violence.
Gilberto Hinojosa, chair- man of the Texas Demo- cratic Party, called on Abbott and other Republicans to stop talking about making changes and start acting, saying “too many Texans have died already.”
“It’s time for Texas Repub- licans to stop ignoring the outcry from law enforce- ment, parents and our students on common-sense gun reform,” Hinojosa said. “It’s time for Texas Republicans to cast aside the demands of the gun lobby and keep guns out of the hands of those who would murder our children.”
Staunch gun rights advo- cates, meantime, vowed to fight any encroachment on the right to legally own and carry weapons.
“We have already sac- rificed too much on gun rights,” Kaitlin Bennett, grassroots director of lib- ertarian news site Liberty Hangout, tweeted Monday. “If we continue to ‘negoti
ate’ our rights, we will find ourselves without them.”
Tuesday’s discussion will include education and law enforcement officials, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, House Speaker Joe Straus and a state senator and House member from each political party.
The 23 participants also will include an architect to offer perspectives on school design, Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks to discuss efforts to create a school dis
trict police department, and several leaders to address the school marshal program, created by the Legislature in 2013 to arm employees at public schools. The marshal program was later amended to add private schools and two-year community colleges.
Details of the Wednesday and Thursday discus- sions will be released the day before each event, Abbott’s office said.
However, an official from Texas Gun Sense, which believes stronger gun restrictions can increase safety, said a representative was invited to attend the Wednesday session and will advocate for programs that promote the safe storage of weapons and suicide-prevention initiatives.
The organization also will press for universal back- ground checks before all gun sales, including private transactions, and the creation of “extreme risk protective orders” that would allow a judge to order guns to be confiscated from those who threaten to harm them- selves or others and bar them from buying or having fire- arms for a specified time.
“We need immediate action. School starts in the fall, and we can’t be fooling around,” said Gyl Switzer, executive director of Texas Gun Sense. In related news Monday:
Abbott’s re-election campaign canceled plans to give away a Texas-made shotgun as part of a promotion. The giveaway drew criticism from gun control advocates, particularly March for Our Lives-Austin, which called the promotion a “disgusting display of disregard” for the consequences of gun violence after a shotgun was
one of the weapons used to kill 10 at Santa Fe High
School last week. The Abbott campaign contest will now offer a $250 gift certificate instead.
State Rep. Byron Cook, R-Corsicana, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee, asked Abbott to call the Legislature into a special session to address school safety.
“If we act now, we can i mplement policy and appropriate state funding to ensure our schools will be safer before the next school year begins in August,” Cook told Abbott in a letter, adding that waiting until the regular session begins in January would mean that another school year will come and go “without legislative action or support.”
Several Democratic leaders have issued a similar call for a special session, as has state Rep. Jason Villalba, a Dallas Republican who was defeated in the March primary. While Cook is the highest-ranking state Republican to do so, he’s also a lame duck after declining to seek re-election in November.