Six Years Post-Parkland, Little Has Been Done to Solve the Gun Violence Crisis
For Immediate Release: February 14, 2024
TEXAS – The Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and FRONTLINE released their investigation of active shooter training protocols in schools, finding that no states mandate annual active shooter training for police officers, while 37 states require active shooter training for school personnel and students.
“Six years after Parkland and nearly six since Santa Fe, the people who are getting the most active shooter training in schools are our kids. At best, we are teaching our students how to die less,” said Uvalde State Senator Roland Gutierrez, who saw the carnage of the Robb Elementary massacre.
The report also found that across the United States, active shooter training decisions are often left to individual school districts and associated law enforcement departments, a reactionary approach in which many officers are not provided active shooter instruction. Gutierrez demands more proactive measures to prevent gun violence in schools.
“We are the richest country in the world, and the only country where this happens. There must be better training for law enforcement, but at the end of the day we have to make sure that these weapons never find their way into the hands of dangerous people. We need the legal tools to do that – emergency protective orders, universal background checks, raising the age limit to buy firearms, and an assault weapons ban.
“All of this can be done, and these are laws that are popular even among Republican voters, but we are being held back by Ted Cruz and others like him, who have put our lives in peril and sold our state out to the gun lobby. We have to stop the madness and keep our communities safe from gun violence.”
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