Joe Biden’s new choice to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is opposed to training and arming teachers with military or police backgrounds.
“I think this is a politician’s plan, quite frankly, I mean it doesn’t protect people in any meaningful way. It’s more than a day late and much more than a dollar short," Steve Dettelbach said, according to an NPR news story he included in his background file.
Meanwhile, a Texas Department of Public Safety briefing said the shooter in Tuesday's mass killing of elementary school children in Uvalde, Texas fired shots outside the school for 12 minutes and met no armed opposition before entering the school.
Once inside, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos barricaded himself in a classroom where 19 students and two teachers died, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
In his failed 2018 bid for Ohio attorney general, Dettelbach endorsed a far-reaching anti-gun position, including being against arming teachers and banning the AR-15. The winner in that race backed training and arming teachers who had police or military backgrounds.
In September, Team Biden pulled the nomination of what critics said was another far-reaching anti-gun zealot, David Chipman, to head the ATF.
Arming teachers with military or police backgrounds is endorsed by key officials in Texas who said it could have lessened the tragedy at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told Fox News: "The reality is, we don't have the resources to have law enforcement at every school. It takes time for law enforcement, no matter how prepared, no matter how good they are to get there. So, having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope.”
Public interest law professor John Banzhaf said "arming a few selected and specially trained teachers would be particular important for rural schools where it may take law enforcement officers precious minutes before they can arrive after bring called. Another major advantage is that — unlike most other measures now being discussed to reduce school shootings which require federal and/or state action — permitting or even encouraging selected teachers to be armed is something which can be done immediately without waiting for such long-delayed and not-very-likely legislative action."
As long as they maintain majorities in the House and Senate, Democrats are unlikely to bring up any legislation in which any teachers would be armed. In fact, Democrats nationwide have made it a point to remove any police presence from schools.
Democrats "can never be allowed to forget" how hard they "worked to expel police officers from schools," Breitbart's John Nolte noted in a May 25 analysis. "At the state and local level, Democrats have and continue to push and push and push to remove police and leave schoolchildren defenseless."
Democrat Sens. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, along with Democrats Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, have introduced legislation that would prohibit federal money to be used to fund police in schools.
The legislation has the backing of the two major teachers’ unions, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA). It also has the support of a number of civil rights organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the Human Rights Campaign.
"Why would Democrats and powerful school unions want to leave children defenseless to any maniac who wants CNN to make him famous?" Nolte asked. "Why would teachers’ unions want to leave their own people defenseless. Aren’t unions supposed to look after the people they represent?"
Nolte continued:
"The corporate media will never stop incentivizing shooting up schools. Thanks to our pro-school shooting media, every school shooter knows that shooting up a school will give him exactly what he wants: the power to shake up the country.
"We know the only thing that will stop a maniac with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
"We know all this, and yet Democrats still want to remove cops from schools.
"So the question is why? And the answer is simple.
"There is no greater propaganda tool to push to disarm the American people than school shootings. Police in schools stop and discourage school shootings.
"We could protect our schools. But Democrats and the school unions that own Democrats and the left-wing media do not want to protect schools.
"Why?
"Because Democrats and their unions and their media believe disarming the public is a higher priority than your child’s life."
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