Pete Buttigieg says blaming doorways for school shootings is ‘insanity’

“The thought that us being the only created state in which this takes place routinely — specially in phrases of the mass shootings — is someway a final result of the layout of the doorways on our college buildings is the definition of madness, if not the definition of denial,” Buttigieg said Sunday for the duration of an job interview with “This Week” on ABC.

Pursuing the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, a amount of Republican lawmakers slammed the politicization of gun legal rights, as a substitute arguing that foreseeable future gunmen could be stopped by putting up more safety guards and locking all but one particular doorway at universities.

Uvalde mayor recounts frantic try to connect with shooter in the course of massacre

“Have a person door into and out of the faculty and have that a single doorway, armed law enforcement officers at that doorway,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) explained May well 25 all through an interview with Fox News’s Jesse Watters. “If that experienced occurred … when that psychopath arrived, the armed law enforcement officers could have taken him out and we would have 19 small children and two lecturers still alive.”

Cruz also called for the installation of bulletproof doors and glass to assist stop shootings. His attractiveness for a one entry place at schools was echoed by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and former president Donald Trump, who stated “schools ought to be the single hardest focus on in our country” all through his speech at a National Rifle Affiliation convention in Houston days soon after the attack.

In the wake of 1 of the deadliest university shootings in U.S. heritage, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) wrote a letter to Mike Morath, the commissioner of the Texas Instruction Company, inquiring for the implementation of “heightened safety measures” in universities, which include “weekly inspections of exterior doors to validate they are secure in the course of university several hours.” Very last 7 days, Abbott also called on the state’s legislature to address matters such as university security, psychological health and firearm basic safety through a sequence of “special legislative committees,” The Washington Write-up described.

Republicans’ concentrate on hardening entry points in educational institutions follows an ongoing investigation into the assault in Uvalde, where by doors have taken centre phase, the Involved Press documented. Law enforcement have presented diverse accounts about how the taking pictures played out, at first stating the gunman had entered the school as a result of a back doorway propped open by a instructor and later stating the doorway experienced not appropriately locked right after the teacher closed it.

There have been above 200 mass shootings so significantly in 2022

Because the faculty shooting in Texas, there have been at least 33 other mass shootings — described as those people in which at the very least four victims are wounded or killed — in the United States, including extra than a dozen in excess of Memorial Working day weekend. This earlier Saturday and Sunday, shootings killed at least 10 folks in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Michigan and South Carolina. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there hasn’t been a one 7 days in the United States with out a mass shooting so much this yr.

The “horrific scourge of gun violence in this nation,” Buttigieg claimed Sunday, has shaken up cities, where by mayors are “taking the techniques that you can locally” to minimize violence. Nonetheless there is only so significantly they can do with no federal action, he extra.

“You’re also looking at Washington to say, ‘Will just about anything be different this time?’ ” reported Buttigieg, the previous mayor of South Bend, Ind. “Will we in fact acknowledge the good reasons why we are the only country, the only developed state, where by this occurs on a program foundation?”

Congress is planning to get up gun-control laws, with talks in the Senate currently being led by senators John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). Though the lawmakers are functioning on a proposal to encourage states to put into action red-flag legislation to preserve guns out of the hands of individuals considered to be a menace to themselves or some others, the programs would probably not contain renewing the federal assault weapons ban or substantially expanding federal track record checks, as President Biden has termed for, The Submit formerly claimed.