The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
‘Knowledge’ not guns
Activists slam DeVos bid to arm teachers
NEWTOWN – Sandy Hook gun violence prevention activists implored U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday to reject a proposal that would allow schools to use federal grants to arm teachers.
“Let’s hope that she will listen not only to us but to all the teachers, the students, the parents, the members of the community and to law enforcement,” said Mark Barden, the father of a boy slain in the Sandy Hook massacre and a co-founder of the nonprofit Sandy Hook Promise. “Arming teachers is a bad idea.”
DeVos, who will convene the last of four listening sessions about school safety in Alabama next week, was considering allowing districts to use money earmarked for student enrichment and safe classrooms to buy guns for teachers, according to several news reports.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy responded by inserting an 11th-hour amendment into a spending bill on Thursday that would block school districts from using taxpayer money on teachers’ firearms.
“I’m doing everything in my power to make sure that Secretary Devos’s plan to arm our schools is stopped in its tracks,” said Murphy, who noted that in March, when Congress passed the $50 million STOP School Violence Act, it “expressly opposed putting guns in the hands of teachers.”
Student activists with the Junior Newtown Action Alliance agreed.
“We don’t need federal funds to arm our teachers,” the group tweeted on Thursday. “We still need
federal funds for mental health services for our PTSD due to a gunman using an AR-15 to massacre 20 1st graders & 6 of our educators in our elementary school.”
The activists’ response follows an emotional youth rally in here on Aug. 12, when teenagers from Newtown and the Florida high school where 17 students and staff were massacred on Valentine’s Day staged speeches in support of gun violence prevention.
News of the DeVos proposal, reported first in the New York Times, comes just days before students across Connecticut return to class for a new school year.
DeVos’ office did not respond to a request for a comment on Thursday.
The NRA, which has supported arming teachers in reaction to school shootings, did not respond to a request for comment.
The Newtown-based trade association for the gun industry said it was up to schools to decide what safety precautions to take to protect students and staff.
“We will continue to concentrate on our own safety initiatives, such as Project Child Safe and Don’t Lie for The Other Guy,” said Michael Bazinet, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The swift reaction by Newtown activists to the DeVos proposal was in part because this was not the first time the idea was floated.
President Donald Trump suggested arming teachers during a White House listening session in February, following the Valentine’s Day massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Among the parents, teachers, and students at that listening session was Nicole Hockley, a co-founder of Sandy Hook Promise who lost a son in the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre.
“Rather than arm (teachers) with a firearm, I would rather arm them with the knowledge of how to prevent these acts from happening in the first place,” Hockley told Trump.
On Thursday, the Newtown Action Alliance said federal education money was better spent on school supplies, arguing that teachers “are not bodyguards for our children.”
Jahana Hayes, the Democratic candidate for Connecticut’s 5th Congressional District, said taxpayer money should be spent on preparing students for lifetimes of success.
“Federal education funding needs to go into the classroom, not toward a horribly misguided idea to arm teachers that will not make our children any safer,” said Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year.
Her opponent, Republican Manny Santos, said federal grants should be available for school districts that want to provide firearms and training for teachers.
“Communities should be able to defend themselves the best way they see fit,” Santos said.