US education chief seeks action to prevent school shootings

WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Miguel Cardona claimed Thursday he is ashamed the United States is “becoming desensitized to the murder of children” and that motion is essential now to prevent much more life from remaining lost in university shootings like the 1 in Uvalde, Texas.

Cardona spoke at a Dwelling Education and Labor Committee listening to two days after a gunman armed with an AR-15-design and style rifle stormed into an elementary university and killed 19 young children and two instructors. The massacre, which adopted the deadly of shootings of 10 individuals this month at a Buffalo, New York, grocery retail outlet, has revived the debate about gun management.

On Thursday, the committee chairman, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., opened the hearing by keeping a minute of silence in memory of these who had died in Texas.

When the hearing was on the Education Department’s spending budget and priorities, Cardona started his testimony by addressing the capturing.

“After Columbine, immediately after Sandy Hook, soon after Parkland, just after every single of these and other massacres, we as educators did our most effective to seem moms and dads in their eyes and guarantee them that we’ll do almost everything to protect their toddlers,” Cardona explained, referencing faculty shootings in Colorado, Connecticut and Florida.

But he said all the steps taken in reaction to all those earlier university shootings — which include lively shooter drills, online early detection tools and more safe developing entrances and perimeters — “are no match for what we’re up towards.”

Delivering no specifics, he claimed, “we require motion now” to shield America’s youngsters. “Let’s not normalize this,” he mentioned. “Let’s use each individual ounce of affect that we have to get anything accomplished to aid avoid this from occurring all over again.”

Cardona explained to lawmakers that he would be “failing you as secretary of education if I did not tell you I was ashamed, I am, that we as a place are getting to be desensitized to the murder of youngsters. I’d be failing you as secretary of education if I did not use this platform to say that students and teachers and college leaders are frightened.”

The Cabinet member did not go as far as his boss, President Joe Biden, who in an emotional tackle mentioned Tuesday, “When in God’s identify are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?”

Biden earlier had named for a ban on assault-style weapons, more durable federal background check out specifications and rules aimed at preserving guns out of the fingers of individuals with mental overall health issues.

The combat above guns has been break up largely on social gathering traces. Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked a domestic terrorism invoice that would have opened discussion on gun basic safety.

Fairly than regulate guns, some Republicans have proposed arming academics to deter faculty shootings.

Cardona rejected that.

“And the solution of arming teachers, in my view, is further disrespect to a career that is already beleaguered and not experience the assistance of so several individuals,” he reported.

Scott, in his opening remarks, termed university shootings “too typical of an occurrence” in The us.

“We could have prevented a large amount of these if elected leaders valued kids and households additional than guns,” he stated. “Instead, time and time yet again, Congress has unsuccessful to enact any sensible or greatly supported proposals to respond to these tragedies and reduce another 1 from happening.”

But Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, the leading Republican on the committee, cautioned versus a swift hurry to motion.

“We will have to be considerate about how we explore and deal with school safety and psychological health challenges,” Foxx explained. “Federal improvements should really not be built in haste.”

___

Associated Push writer Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York, contributed to this report.

___

A lot more on the university taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/university-shootings