Austin(US): The state of Texas in the US will allow teachers to have more guns in school and will increase mental health services for students under bills that Governor Greg Abbott signed into law Thursday as major parts of the state’s response to a 2018 mass shooting at a high school near Houston.
School districts will be allowed to place as many armed teachers or school personnel on campus as they see fit.
The new laws also are designed to put more mental health counselors on campus, train teachers to recognise mental health problems and create ‘threat assessment teams’ to help identify potentially dangerous students.
“We are proud to have responded to one of the most horrific days in the state of Texas,” the Republican governor said of the shooting at Santa Fe High School in which eight students and two teachers were killed. “We can never erase the pain that this tragedy caused, but we can act to make our schools safer.”
Lawmakers also approved separate measures to ‘harden’ campuses with metal detectors, vehicle barriers, new security doors, shooter alarm systems and other means.
Abbott called school safety one of his top priorities this year, but he and the Republican-majority Legislature made no move to restrict the sale or possession of guns in a state with more than 1.3 million handgun license holders.
Efforts to create the so-called ‘red flag’ laws to keep guns away from people deemed dangerous to themselves or others, and to toughen penalties for negligent home storage were defeated. “Right now it’s not necessary in the state of Texas,” Abbott said. “We think the best approach is what we passed.”
Texas isn’t alone in its push to arm more educators. Florida recently approved increasing the number of armed teachers in response to the February 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland that killed 17 people.
But teachers groups, gun control activists and some parents worry that more firearms on campus could lead to lethal accidents. Critics have also suggested that it could lead to more violence against black students because of inherent biases.
AP