was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of .

For almost three hours, last month in which senators pressed her on everything from to transgender athletes. But none from either party asked her about

That’s a glaring oversight, according to some leaders working to reduce , while others say that fears about the so dominated the hearing that there was little time to question McMahon about the full spectrum of education topics. , it’s unclear how McMahon will address the , but her previous comments on gun control and the White House’s actions on the issue so far suggest to prevention advocates that this administration won’t make it a priority — potentially endangering youth, domestic violence victims and other vulnerable groups.

“T��� No. 1 concern amongst American families is making sure we have safe classrooms,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of the National Parents Union, a nonprofit organization working to improve educational outcomes and policies for children and families. “Can we keep our children alive in America’s classrooms? The idea that we would not even ask the next U.S. secretary of education about what she plans to do to keep our classrooms safer is ridiculous.”

Rodrigues, who was in the room during the Senate confirmation hearing in February, said that President Donald Trump’s plans to dismantle the Department of Education make it imperative to know McMahon’s approach to school gun violence. On Tuesday, , nearly half of its staff, heightening concerns about its potential demise. Twenty-one attorneys general in Democratic-led states sued the Trump administration over the layoffs on Thursday, arguing that eliminating the staffers was “illegal and unconstitutional.”

Gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and teens, based on data from the Centers for Disease for Control and Prevention, and disproportionately kills youth of color. School shootings have steadily increased over time, with recorded this year, according to the K-12 Shooting Database, which tracks gun violence incidents on campuses.

McMahon should have been asked “how she plans to be able to address these very real and very serious issues without having a U.S. Department of Education that is working with states and working with districts,” Rodrigues said.

The Department of Education did not respond by publication time to The 19th’s request for comment about McMahon’s plans on gun violence.

During her 2017 confirmation hearing, former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a Trump nominee, suggested that guns might protect students from grizzly bears, leading to widespread ridicule. Last year, , or Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO), that allow guns to be confiscated from individuals considered a threat to themselves or others.

ERPO, she wrote, “could easily be used to REMOVE Firearms from Law-Abiding Citizens. Chicago and NYC have some of the strictest ‘gun laws’ in the country and yet they also have some of the highest gun violence. Recently 9 people were killed in 24 hours in Chicago. A pregnant mom was seriously injured and her 11-year-old son who was trying to protect her was killed.”

McMahon argued that it would have been more effective to keep the convicted felon who shot the mother and son in prison than risk removing firearms from individuals without criminal records. Her views appear to align with those of the president, who on directing the attorney general to review all regulations and policies created during President Joe Biden’s administration that purportedly infringe on the public’s rights to bear arms and to devise a plan to counteract such restrictions.

“This administration has made it pretty clear that it is not looking to prioritize gun violence prevention, whether that’s in the nominees that it has put forward, including the education secretary, or the executive order on the Second Amendment that came out of the White House,” said Nina Vinik, founder and president of Project Unloaded, a Gen Z-focused gun violence prevention group. “T��� administration is looking to roll back the progress that’s been made over the last decade or more to reduce gun violence.”

Noah Lumbantobing, former director of communications for March for Our Lives (MFOL), a student-led gun violence prevention organization, said he suspects Trump’s administration will reverse the policies the group supports to retaliate against the Biden administration.

“It’s so clearly about vengeance and not at all about children’s safety, so that’s scary,” said Lumbantobing, who transitioned out of MFOL on Wednesday to step into a new role in the gun safety movement. “We still don’t know what’s going to be on the chopping block, but we have no doubt that he’s going to undo a lot of the things that we spent a lot of time fighting for, and even more importantly, things that have saved lives.”

In 2024, gun violence incidents on campuses dropped to 331 from 349 the prior year, according to the K-12 School Shooting Database. Lumbantobing attributes the decrease in shootings to the “common-sense life-saving solutions” the Biden administration adopted. That includes an executive order Biden issued that expanded the definition of a gun dealer since some gun sellers were not only going undetected but also neglecting to perform background checks on customers.

“Now, they do have to do background checks and to act responsibly,” Lumbantobing said. “That’s going to get undone. So there’s a lot of danger here, both in undoing some of the laws and also just selectively not enforcing laws that are on the books. It’s going to kill children, and it’s just for partisan gain.”

He also has concerns about how relaxing gun restrictions will affect victims of domestic violence, a problem the Biden administration addressed, in part, through tougher background checks.

“T��� tightened loopholes for dating partners to not be able to obtain firearms and potentially harm or kill their partners,” Lumbantobing said of the federal law passed in 2022 that provides states with funding to develop red flag laws and other interventions. If the Department of Justice “chooses not to enforce the laws on the books, no one’s looking out for victims of domestic abuse,” he added.

At least 110 domestic violence-related shootings have occurred at schools from 1966 to the present, the K-12 School Shooting Database reports. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act routes resources to intervention programs to reduce gun crimes, but Lumbantobing said he isn’t sure if that will happen under the Trump administration. He does give Trump credit, however, for supporting a ban on bump stocks, gun accessories that essentially turn semi-automatic rifles into automatic weapons. In 2017, during Trump’s first term, a gunman used bump stocks to kill 60 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas music festival.

“So there’s some hope that we have that he’ll not be as constrained by GOP orthodoxy there, but it’s not looking good,” Lumbantobing said. “He moves with the wind.”

That the Trump administration has chosen not to continue the Office of Gun Violence Prevention established during Biden’s tenure has also worried gun control supporters. Although Trump did not formally eliminate the office, he has yet to hire personnel to maintain it, Lumbantobing said. The office no longer has a functioning website either.

“What’s so dangerous is that we may not notice it today or tomorrow, but in a year, two years, whenever the next mass shooting happens, I think we’ll be able to look and see it’s because Trump stopped enforcing the law,” Lumbantobing said.

The Office of Gun Violence Prevention represented a bipartisan approach to gun safety because it allowed the White House to focus on prevention in a holistic way that drew on government resources but did not require the creation of any new laws, Lumbantobing said.

“How do we fix this … within the constraints that we have? They made massive progress on that,” he said. “Getting rid of that office is a refutation of that very premise, and I think it is a real dangerous one. If you can’t agree with us that children dying is a bad thing, boy, are we in trouble.”

Several states, including California, Massachusetts, Maryland and Wisconsin, have opened — or passed legislation to open — their own offices of gun violence prevention, suggesting that states and not the federal government will take the lead on curbing gun violence prevention during the Trump administration.

“I think we’re going to continue to see a world where gun safety exists in some places and not others,” Lumbantobing said. “That’s not the America that young people deserve.”

Although he would have liked to see senators ask McMahon more questions about school shootings during her confirmation hearing, he said their focus on the potential abolishment of the Department of Education was appropriate. Getting rid of that federal agency would be an attack on gun safety because of the work it does to reduce school shootings.

“T��� Department of Education has a critical role in that work and could have a bigger role,” Lumbantobing said. “Just last year, we worked with Secretary [Miguel] Cardona to do a safe storage campaign to encourage parents. We understand that people are going to own guns. There’s nothing wrong with that if you own a legally obtained firearm. But it’s important that folks store those firearms safely because, otherwise, they show up in places we don’t want, in school shootings, in instances of domestic violence or interpersonal violence, even amongst young people or kids shooting themselves accidentally.”

While March for Our Lives collaborated with Cardona on a safe storage campaign, Lumbantobing does not anticipate engaging in such work with McMahon.

“She has expressed no interest in that,” he said. “We would love to, but she won’t. Trump has come out and said that he wants to be the very best friend possible to the NRA [National Rifle Association], so we know how she’ll approach it, whether she takes an ax to the Department of Education or just starts to unwind some of the pivotal policies that the Department of Ed pushes to keep kids safe.”

Trump’s Cabinet picks are not the only concern of gun violence prevention groups. They also fear the impact of the ’ recent decision that rescinded the federal restriction on 18-to-20-year-olds buying handguns. More than one mass school shooter has fallen into this age group. In 2022, an . Four years before that, a 19-year-old fatally shot 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. In 2012, a 20-year-old shooter struck down 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

“For the Fifth Circuit to say that trying to address the scourge of gun violence and its impact on young people with reasonable age restriction on handgun purchases is not permissible under the Second Amendment is potentially a real setback in terms of trying to address youth gun violence in this country” Vinik said.

Without being able to rely on government intervention or cooperation, gun prevention advocates are coming up with their own solutions to address youth gun violence. Project Unloaded, for example, hopes to shift the culture around gun use by providing young people with facts and figures about the drawbacks of firearms, including increased risk of homicide, suicide and accidents.

“When we give them that information in a way that’s really engaging and accessible, they do increase their awareness of what those risks are, and it does lead them, in many cases, to shift away from a desire to use guns in the future,” Vinik said.

Since young people often learn about guns online, particularly on social media or through gaming platforms, Project Unloaded recently launched a campaign called “” that involves a collaboration with about a dozen gamers who are also content creators on Tiktok, YouTube and Instagram. The campaign, Vinik said, aims to instill this message into youth: “Play hard when you’re in a video game, but in real life, at home, in your community, you’re safer without guns.”

Josh Arrowood carries his .22-caliber handgun most everywhere he goes in his rural Tennessee community — to church at Freewill Baptist, at the Food City store where he shops for groceries, and in the Greene County Courthouse, where he serves as a commissioner.

A that passed this spring would let him, under certain conditions, carry the gun at his workplace, too — South Greene Middle School in Greeneville, where he teaches world history to sixth graders. And Arrowood, who’s had a handgun permit for 15 years, is open to doing so if it can provide an extra layer of security against a school shooting.

“I was in high school when Columbine happened,” he said, recalling the 1999 massacre at a Colorado high school. “And I remember kids putting things like a bat or a baseball in their backpacks so they could try to protect themselves if a shooting happened in their school.”

A gun, at least, “gives a teacher a chance if there’s an armed intruder,” he said.

But between concerns about his personal liability and ambivalence about the new law from local school leaders, he won’t be carrying his pocket-size gun to class this school year.

And because of the way Tennessee’s new law was written, he said, “I don’t expect anybody to take advantage of it.”

Indeed, for all the protests and discord over the , there’s little talk among school districts or educators about using the option to arm teachers or staff as the new academic year begins. Not a single school system has indicated that it’s planning or working to train employees to carry a gun voluntarily under the new law, according to dozens of school and law enforcement officials contacted by Chalkbeat.

Then again, no one can be sure, since the law doesn’t require local officials to report whether they are deploying the option in any of their schools. And any documents that kickstart the program at the local level aren’t open to the public.

But the law does lay down a set of conditions for a teacher to be able to carry a gun in school, including a training requirement, a mental health evaluation, and a signed agreement between the superintendent and principal, plus written authorization from local law enforcement.

And there’s another big hurdle: a provision that assigns teachers sole liability for anything that might go wrong with their gun, including an accidental shooting, or their failure to prevent a tragedy.

The tepid response to the law signals a disconnect between educators and lawmakers on whether more guns in schools make them safer, or could accidentally cause more harm. There’s concern about shifting even more responsibilities to teachers, turning schools into prison-like environments, and unwittingly disrupting an educational climate that should be welcoming and supportive. Tennessee’s urban communities are especially desperate to get guns and gun violence out of their schools.

School shootings spur efforts to arm teachers

After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School attack in Newtown, Connecticut, where a shooter slaughtered 26 people, including 20 children, dozens of states introduced legislation to arm teachers and staff. More than 30 states now allow it under certain conditions, according to the , which tracks gun laws.

In Tennessee, which has some of the nation’s most permissive gun laws, the legislature passed a 2016 law to let some school employees carry a gun in certain rural counties to try to bolster security at remotely located schools without an armed school resource officer. But efforts by local law enforcement to obtain liability insurance to train school staff proved to be a stumbling block.

Former Rep. David Byrd, a Waynesboro Republican and retired school principal who sponsored the measure for Wayne and Pickett counties, said he still supports the strategy, but is not aware of any school employee who has carried a gun under that law.

In 2018, after another mass school shooting killed 17 people and injured 17 others in Parkland, Florida, Rep. Ryan Williams began his annual quest to revise and expand the law across Tennessee.

A Republican from Cookeville, about 80 miles east of Nashville, Williams said he was motivated, in part, by concern about his own two children who, at the time, attended a 2,400-student public high school with one school resource officer and dozens of potential points of entry. He argued that teachers need “more than a stapler” to protect their students and themselves if locked in a classroom with a shooter in the building.

But each year, from top law enforcement organizations such as the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, the Tennessee Association of Chiefs of Police, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol. They worried that teachers carrying guns could lead to even more gun-related deaths or injuries in a state that already has a higher-than-normal rate of accidental shootings.

Then came the deadly 2023 shooting at Nashville’s church-run Covenant School, where a shooter before being killed by police.

Mass protests erupted, with to demand tighter gun laws and reduced access to guns.

Among other things, they wanted to roll back a 2021 law that lets the majority of Tennesseans carry a loaded handgun in most public places without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety. And they sought laws that would keep guns away from people who may be experiencing a mental health crisis.

The Republican-controlled legislature, however, went a different way, after prioritizing measures to further fortify the state’s K-12 campuses. A in school safety paid for security upgrades at public and private schools alike, and most significantly, included funding to place a full-time SRO in every public school across Tennessee.

Against that backdrop, Williams resurrected his bill to let Tennessee school employees voluntarily carry guns under certain conditions.

His co-sponsor, Sen. Paul Bailey, argued the law was needed to provide an armed presence on every campus, especially in rural areas that serve a third of the state’s students. On the Senate floor in April, the Sparta Republican said nearly a third of the state’s 1,800-plus public schools still didn’t have an armed SRO, partly due to a shortage in the profession.

It’s hard to know whether those numbers were accurate, or still are. Under Gov. Bill Lee’s administration, the state stopped sharing school security data publicly.

Williams revised their bill to tighten the standards for who could carry and under what conditions — satisfying the state’s law enforcement groups which, for the first time, took a neutral position on the bill this year.

Carrying a gun would be allowed only if the local school superintendent, principal, and law enforcement official agree. A school employee who volunteers to carry must hold an enhanced permit, complete 40 hours of certified training in school policing at their own expense, and pass a mental health evaluation and FBI background check.

Liability provision for armed employees could be a barrier

However, even for school employees who can meet those conditions, taking a gun to school became significantly less attractive under one more provision.

The law makes the armed employees solely liable for how they use, or fail to use, a handgun in school. Meanwhile, if a civil lawsuit is filed, the statute shields the school district and local law enforcement agency from having to pay monetary damages.

Liability is now part of the discussion for anyone dealing with the prospect, or the aftermath, of a school shooting. In addition to the pursuit of stricter gun laws, litigation and even criminal charges have become part of the healing and recovery process for survivors, family members, and community leaders seeking to hold people beyond the shooter accountable for anything that may have contributed to the bloodshed.

After the 2022 rampage at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, for instance, families of the 19 victims , including the promise of higher standards and better training for local officers. In Oxford, Michigan, families of four high school students killed in a 2021 shooting there accused the school district of negligence in a lawsuit, and prosecutors charged the parents of the young shooter for failing to keep a gun away from him.

Liddy Ballard, state policy director at Brady, the nation’s oldest gun violence prevention organization, said Tennessee’s liability provision should be a red flag for any school employee interested in carrying a gun. Her group opposed the law and lobbies instead for gun safety legislation that is , such as extreme risk protection orders and expanded background checks, both of which Tennessee lawmakers have rejected.

“This bill is outright dangerous,” Ballard said, “but state lawmakers knew that from the beginning. Why else would they include an immunity clause for local education agencies that dissolves accountability when a teacher’s firearm is misused or falls into the wrong hands?”

The state’s two largest teacher organizations, which also opposed the legislation, agree that placing the liability burden solely on individual educators is a non-starter — or at least should be.

“As teachers consider the risks of carrying a firearm on school grounds, they need to know that it is unlikely they could obtain insurance coverage that would offer them any sort of protection should a claim be made against them,” said Tanya T. Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association.

Secrecy is another pillar of the law.

In an effort to deter potential intruders who wouldn’t know which adults at school might have a gun, the law is built, in part, on the idea of confidentiality. Its provisions provide a veil of secrecy if a school superintendent and principal sign a written agreement to implement the policy — and anonymity for the person they authorize to carry or possess a firearm on school grounds.

Parents don’t have to be notified if their child’s teacher is carrying a concealed handgun, nor do educators if someone in their building is armed besides a law enforcement officer.

A district’s required notification to local law enforcement officials is not open for public inspection, nor are any other documents, files, or records related to carrying a weapon on school grounds under the law.

“T��� way it’s set up, there’s really no way to know” how many faculty or school staff members are carrying a gun, said Jeff Bledsoe, executive director of the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association. “It’s up to the local level to decide.”

Memphis school district says no. Some others aren’t saying.

Before and after the law was enacted, numerous local officials, particularly in the state’s largest cities and towns, announced they would not seek to arm school employees. Most said they already have a trained law enforcement officer in each of their schools.

“Schools are for learning, and emergency situations should be handled by trained officers,” said Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr., in a with Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins and interim Police Chief C.J. Davis in May. Memphis has long struggled with the presence of guns around its schools and neighborhoods.

Feagins said it more bluntly in their announcement: “We will not allow teachers to carry guns in our schools.”

But some school leaders, especially in the state’s rural areas, have been less vocal in recent months about their plans.

“Most districts don’t want anything to do with this policy,” said Gary Lilly, executive director of the state superintendent organization.

“A few have said maybe, just to keep their options open,” he added. “You can make the case that not announcing your plan is a way to keep bad guys from knowing either way, so there’s a bit of a deterrent.”

For some that are holding off, it may just take time for local officials and school employees to evaluate whether to take advantage of the law.

“This is all new, so some folks may be waiting and watching,” said Bledsoe, who leads the sheriffs’ organization.

Williams, the House sponsor, said he’s not surprised at the cool early reception, including in his own district, given that Tennessee is a diverse state with unique local needs and cultures that take time to sort through.

“Unfortunately, if we do have another active shooter in our state and something happens close to home, I think people would reevaluate their stance and consider doing it,” he said.

JC Bowman, who leads Professional Educators of Tennessee, has a different concern.

“My fear is that we’re opening up a Pandora’s box,” Bowman said. “What happens if our state budget gets tight? Will we starve our school safety money for SROs and turn to this?”

For Arrowood, who also has three school-age children, the issue is keeping kids safe at school in his rural corner of northeastern Tennessee.

Two years ago at a basketball game at his school, for instance, a parent came out of the stands and pulled a knife on a coach. No one was injured, and the parent left before the school’s SRO arrived on the scene, but “in situations like that, you never know,” he said.

Arrowood said he’s never had to use the gun he usually carries when he’s out in his community. “T��� goal is to never have to draw it,” he said.

He wouldn’t hesitate to use it at school, though, if he were allowed to carry it there and an armed intruder got inside, especially if something happened to the school’s SRO.

“Around here, people are used to guns. They’ve grown up with them. They’re hunters,” Arrowood continued. “But some people also fear guns, and a healthy fear of guns is a good thing. I guess it’s a balance.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at

The Biden administration is calling on the nation’s school principals to promote safe gun storage among parents and staff as part of its effort to prevent school shootings. 

at the White House, including several who have experienced school shootings, first lady Jill Biden said the nation asks a lot of educators, but their leadership on this issue could save lives.

“How can we accept a world where the leading cause of death for our children is gun violence?” asked Biden, who visited Uvalde, Texas, in 2022 after 19 students and two teachers were killed at an elementary school. “I don’t want to have to put my hand on another cross with an 8-year-old’s name.”

The resources for schools, which were released ahead of the event, should make it easier for school leaders to talk to families about a sensitive topic, officials said. The materials include a gun storage guide, a to principals from Education Secretary Miguel Cardona and a sample to parents with tips about trigger locks and storing ammunition.

“We often hear from principals that they want to do everything they can to keep their students and educators safe,” Stefanie Feldman, director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, said during a call with reporters Wednesday. “But they shouldn’t have to be experts on safe storage of firearms.”

shows that most school shooters obtain their weapons from home or . That was the case in the 2021 shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan, where the gunman’s parents now face for their role in allowing their son access to a weapon despite red flags. And 80% of gun suicides among children 18 and younger involved a weapon belonging to a family member, .

President Joe Biden, who is backed in this year’s election by major , has taken to reduce gun violence, such as increasing background checks and prohibiting the sale of “.” But Republicans have the president’s efforts to tighten gun restrictions.

Cardona said Thursday that gun safety shouldn’t be a “red or blue issue.” Schools, he added, have adopted other life-saving practices, like having Narcan on hand in case of an opioid overdose, and should “normalize” discussing gun safety. He told the attendees that other community members, like mayors and church elders, will listen to them because they are “credible leaders.”

One principal who was initially skeptical about the administration’s message had a change of heart after attending Thursday’s event.

”We’re instructional leaders,” Edward Cosentino, principal at Phelps Luck Elementary School in Columbia, Maryland, said Wednesday following the release of the new sample materials. “Everything seems to be thrown on the shoulders of principals and schools these days.”

But on Thursday, he said he viewed the call to action as “definitely not an add-on.” 

“It isn’t completely on us,” he said. “It’s part of a larger effort.”

Currently, 34 states have laws intended to prevent children from accessing guns, while eight states specifically require guns to be secured in a locked container or to have a locking device, according to the

The U.S. Department of Justice has issued to encourage  more states to pass such laws. But currently there is no federal requirement that gun owners keep their weapons locked up.

The Thursday event followed Cardona’s Monday in Parkland, Florida. He toured the building where Nikolas Cruz killed 17 students and school staff members and injured another 17 people nearly six years ago. The school, untouched since the shooting, is scheduled to be . Cruz is serving a life sentence for the attack.

“I walked over shattered glass. I saw bullet holes through walls and through desks,” Cardona said. “In some cases that morning, I was standing next to the parent of the murdered child.”

The education department and the , which President Joe Biden established last year, organized the town hall in part with the , a group of administrators who have experienced shootings at their schools. 

“Each of these tragedies leaves an immense amount of trauma,” said Michelle Kefford, principal of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.

Cardona also led a moment of silence for , the Iowa principal who was injured while protecting students during a school shooting on Jan. 4. He died 10 days later.  

“T���re is that heavy load on principals,”  said Tracy Hilliard, who also attended Thursday’s event. She serves as principal of Urbana Elementary in Frederick, Maryland and president of the Maryland Association of Elementary School Principals.“We serve in many roles, but we knew that when we accepted the job.”

But some say the responsibility shouldn’t fall on school leaders who are already overtaxed. 

“I think it’s very unrealistic to expect that school administrators are going to take this on with enthusiasm,” said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a nonprofit that provides training to school leaders. “It’s easy for government and community organizations to say, ‘Let the schools do that.’ ”

Addressing that concern at the event, Cardona said that educators didn’t “sign up” for a pandemic either. 

“If we’re not prioritizing saving the lives of children in our schools,” he said, “and creating a stronger sense of safety for them, we can’t expect them to be able to move the needle on reading or math or all the other things that are so crucial to their education.”

As another school year defined by mass shootings ends in America, Republican-led state legislatures passed measures this session to fortify schools, create guidelines for active shooter drills and safety officer responses, and allow teachers to be armed.

Firearm restrictions, however, were a nonstarter in red states trying to curb school shootings.

The legislation pushed by GOP lawmakers in states such as Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah this year often ran contrary to the advice of gun safety advocates and national education experts, who remain concerned that having more guns in schools only further endangers children and educators.

But the Republican lawmakers interviewed by Stateline say the solution to preventing school shootings is not banning certain weapons or taking away guns from potentially dangerous people, but rather empowering schools to more quickly respond to an active shooter.

A little over a week after three children and three adults were killed in a Nashville elementary school in late March, the Republican-controlled Tennessee legislature passed a wide-reaching school safety bill that did not include firearm restrictions.

The requires schools to keep exterior doors locked when students are present, mandates newly built public schools to install classroom door locks and requires private schools also to conduct active shooter drills, among other elements. (The Nashville shooter, who attacked a private school, shattered a pair of locked glass doors to get inside.)

The bill passed with bipartisan support in April, with only a handful of Democrats voting against it. Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed the measure. In May, he signed that includes $230 million for all schools to have a school resource officer and allows schools to make security upgrades.

With armed personnel and properly secured school buildings, children in Tennessee will be safer, said Republican state Rep. Mark White, one of the bill’s sponsors and a former elementary school principal.

“I take it very seriously,” he said. “When you’re in the building with kids all day long, you fall in love with them, and you want to protect them.”

Hoping for a deterrent

Ensuring schools have armed personnel has been a common thread in the Republican-backed school safety laws this year.

Last month, a little over a year after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Republicans there passed that requires an armed security guard at every school and compels school districts to adopt active shooter plans.

In Mississippi, teachers can now, with extensive training, carry guns in schools after the legislature passed a in March.

Republican state Sen. Jeff Tate, the legislation’s sponsor, argued that assailants target schools because there often is not armed security. He hopes his bill makes potential school shooters think twice.

“We need to make these people realize that, hey, look, there’s going to be a weapon if you go to the school,” Tate said. “That would deter these school shootings.”

Democratic state Sen. Rod Hickman, who voted against the measure because he thought it would make schools less safe, nonetheless wants to now focus on ensuring the state enforces robust training, not only for handling firearms but also to account for “implicit biases” that might prompt armed school personnel to view people of color as a greater threat.

“I hope that the proper steps are taken to create this program,” Hickman said, “but I ultimately don’t think this is the answer to protecting our students.”

Schools in the vast rural areas of Missouri wouldn’t have time to wait for law enforcement to respond to an active shooter, said Republican state Rep. Christina Dinkins. School officials need to react immediately to save lives, she said.

While teachers and administrators already are allowed to carry firearms if they are a school’s designated school protection officer — a position earned through a permit and state-mandated training — Dinkins, after being approached by a school district administrator, offered legislation to expand that role to any school personnel. That could include janitors, she said, who have keys to all the doors and know the ins and outs of the buildings.

“We’re just providing them with other avenues to make sure our children are safe, which is the ultimate goal,” Dinkins said. “You want the person who is most trained, most confident, most comfortable in that type of situation.”

The state House passed her bill in March; the legislative session has since ended.

More firearms in schools

Julie Hutchinson, a social worker for the Clark County, Nevada, school district, responded to the October 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas strip, helping people who were looking for loved ones and information after a gunman opened fire. Sixty people died and 413 others were wounded.

Hutchinson has continued to deal with gun issues, whether it’s helping the school district confront students who bring weapons to school or talking with her own children concerning the increased violence.

Having more guns in schools won’t help, she said.

“It would give a false sense of security,” Hutchinson said. “Is it really going to matter when it comes down to the actual moment?”

Many experts agree with her.

Two decades of association between having school resource officers or security professionals in the building and the prevention of school violence, said Justin Heinze, co-director of the National Center for School Safety, a training and technical assistance hub for implementing evidence-based safety programs in schools.

“T���re is very, very little to next to no data that supports having firearms within schools are going to make those buildings safer,” said Heinze, who also is an associate professor of public health at the University of Michigan.

He continued, “I do have concerns about introducing even more firearms in the building because there is almost certainly going to be an increase in firearm-related injury.”

As more students are exposed to school shootings and the overall number of shootings grows, there’s been a more urgent need for research regarding guns in schools, Heinze added.

Despite the high-profile nature of school shootings, schools are generally safe havens from gun violence, said Allison Anderman, senior counsel and director of local policy for the Giffords Law Center, a nonpartisan gun safety organization. This is largely because guns are mostly prohibited at schools, she said.

Arming teachers does not work, Anderman said.

“T��� idea that someone who’s protecting students and trying to keep them safe and calm is going to go and rush out and shoot an active shooter is just, it’s so absurd,” she said. “It’s very difficult to stop a homicidal person with an AR-15 and several high-capacity magazines.”

There are policies that can prevent school shootings, she said, including banning high-capacity magazines, implementing waiting periods of firearm purchases and expanding so-called red flag laws that take away firearms from people who may be a harm to themselves or others.

But that is a tough sell in some states.

Teachers need to be able to defend themselves and others in an active shooter situation, said Utah Republican state Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, who sponsored successful this session that will waive the permitting fee for school employees to carry a concealed weapon in schools.

“It’s really important that we maintain the availability for individuals who are the good guys who are trying to protect and defend their lives and the lives of others to be able to carry,” she said. “I don’t think it’s helpful to take guns away from everybody or to try to implement extreme gun control measures.”

She also sponsored this session that empowered school resource officers to refer students to judges for violence and weapons offenses on campus. She supported another that created a state position in charge of setting standards for school resource officers. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed all three measures into law in March.

In Tennessee, the legislature is not done with addressing gun violence.

Lee, the GOP governor, called for a special session in August in hopes of implementing a red flag law. Gun safety experts argued the Nashville shooting may have been prevented if the state had a law that allowed a court to seize firearms from people who may harm themselves or others.

White and other Republican legislators will meet with the governor over the coming months to draft a bill that would prevent “innocent people” from having their firearms confiscated under a red flag law, he said.

Gun rights advocates often argue red flag laws violate gun owners’ due process privileges, since judges in some states can temporarily sign off on an extreme risk protection order without hearing from the targeted individual in emergency situations. Gun safety advocates counter that those individuals can eventually present evidence in their defense.

“We can do what’s right for all people,” White said. “Not only protect our children and law-abiding gun owners, but also address those who have mental issues, or those who are just outright criminals. That’s the needle we have to thread right now.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org. Follow Stateline on and .

Five years since the Valentine’s Day school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which resulted in 17 deaths, the heinous attack is no longer the subject of televised prime-time town halls or congressional hearings. But the debates that came in its wake are far from settled. 

The school shooting, among the deadliest in U.S. history, continues to divide the suburban Fort Lauderdale community and drive intense arguments over missed warning signs, prevention measures — and guns. 

A new generation of activists: Overnight, high school student organizers of March for Our Lives became the face of the gun control movement, an overwhelming experience that . 

“I’m still trying to figure out what type of activism I want to engage in, since I don’t want to be passive for the rest of my life but I cannot exist in the way that I used to,” ​​X González wrote for New York magazine last month. “I don’t know how I’m alive after all that.”

Federal action: Their nationwide protests only after another mass school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas, with President Joe Biden last year signing the first gun control measures in nearly three decades. During his State of the Union Address last week, Biden cited the Uvalde massacre in repeating his plea to ban assault rifles. 

Armed guards, red flags: After state lawmakers mandated an armed security guard at every Florida campus post-Parkland, many police departments still , while the state’s red flag gun law — designed to remove weapons from people deemed dangerous — has experienced .  

No permits necessary: Just last month, the that prevents local governments from passing more restrictive gun laws than those dictated by the state. And in Florida where “more guns” has been a prevailing policy response to the shooting, Republican lawmakers have faced pushback for for concealed weapons just weeks before the tragedy’s five-year remembrance. 

In November, the shooter — a former Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student who is now 24 — was sentenced to life in prison after a jury could not unanimously agree on whether to impose the death penalty.