FALLON: To Protect Our Schools, Let's Re-Dedicate Ourselves to the Family – and to Faith

I believe guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens makes society safer. Our focus must be on hardening our classrooms

By Cong. Pat Fallon

Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN, Texas – First and foremost, I want to offer my sincere condolences to all those who suffered tragic loss due to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. My thoughts and prayers are with the souls we lost, their family and loved ones, all the students, teachers, and faculty who were in attendance on May 24th at Robb Elementary, and anyone else affected by the horrors that took place that day.

As I have had some time to reflect on the events of last week, I wanted to share my thoughts with y'all.
 
America has seen a massive deficit of the family unit, and dedication to faith. Social media is taking over the minds of young people, and I believe it is rendering them to be more anti-social.

Non-stop on-screen communication has robbed them of their ability to interact with people in person. This combination has resulted in the destruction of the America we knew and cherished; full of upstanding citizens who had value for the family unit, and who were anchored to a moral code by a love of God and country.

This moral erosion has ushered in the necessity to create effective policies that reflect an appropriate reaction to our declining society.

To protect our children, our teachers, and our schools, we must harden schools in the following ways:

1. Implementing tiered security in every school in America. This means one point of entry, where visitors must be identified and cleared before gaining access into the school. Creating schools with only one way in and out for not only visitors, but teachers and students as well, reduces the ability for a threat to enter a school.
2. Additional school marshals and incentivization for teachers to participate in the training. The more trained individuals on a school campus and in the classroom - the safer ever person in the building. Only 6% of Texas ISDs participate in the state sponsored program I sponsored and supported in the Texas legislature.
3. Requiring school police to adopt the military's doctrine to "advance and secure, then eliminate the threat" - which provides an immediate response to a volatile circumstance.
4. Wiring every school in the country. 13 years ago, when I was on City Council, our city worked with the school district to wire every school. We had every classroom, every hallway - every inch of every school on camera. In addition to the implementation of the cameras, there is a command center which is both mobile and stationary. If there was ever a threat like this, they would know exactly where the threat is, and exactly what the threat is.

It is impossible to comprehend the levels of evil that would drive someone to commit such atrocities. We must protect our children, our teachers, and our schools with every resource we have, so tragedies like this never happen again.

If you have any questions, or need help with a federal agency, please don't hesitate to contact one of YOUR offices both in district or in Washington, D.C.

Congressman Pat Fallon has represented North Texans in the Texas Legislature since 2013, and proudly serves today as the Congressman for Texas’ 4th Congressional District, where he serves over 700,000 great American “bosses”.