Santa Fe Shooting Anniversary

Floor Speech

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Mr. WEBER of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for his service to the people of Arkansas and the people up here in this very humble institution.

Mr. Speaker, today marks the 5-year anniversary of the shooting in Santa Fe High School where 10 innocent lives were lost at the hands of evil. We will never forget that. We will never forget that tragic day that has forever changed Santa Fe, Texas.

My heart and my prayers still go out to the family and friends of those we lost, and I remain immensely grateful to the law enforcement officers who responded to that scene at their own peril.

Mr. Speaker, it is often a good guy with a gun that stops the bad guy with a gun. In Santa Fe, Texas, it was a brave law enforcement officer. Let me tell you that disarming legal gun owners will never, ever make us safer. There are, however, Mr. Speaker, steps that we can take to secure our schools without infringing on our citizens' Second Amendment rights.

There is no reason why our schools should be soft targets. We clearly have the resources and the means to protect the most precious amongst us, and that is going to be our children and their teachers.

Mr. Speaker, we should do everything we can to help school districts. We can hire armed professional police officers to help protect our schools, the kids, protect their teachers, and the staff.

Following the shooting in Santa Fe, I participated in roundtable meetings to discuss that very thing; namely, enhanced security for our schools. I heard about the need to emphasize safety in school architecture and design. We heard about ways to encourage gun owners to responsibly lock away their weapons, and the ways school marshal programs can ensure that armed and trained personnel are present on those campuses.

In response, I introduced a school safety package, Mr. Speaker. The first bill in that package is the Protect Our Children's Schools Act, which would allow the Secretary of Education to use unspent COVID-19 funds designated for schools and localities to reprogram those funds to make our schools safer against those kinds of attacks. This money would be used to strengthen and enhance security systems already in place at those schools.

The second bill, Mr. Speaker, the Protect Against School Shootings, or the PASS Act, would allow qualified law enforcement officers, retired law enforcement officers, and those permitted by State law to carry a firearm in an otherwise gun-free school zone.

Then there is the School Resource Officer Compensation Act, which would incentivize school districts to hire retired law enforcement officers to serve as school resource officers, or SROs, by exempting the respective school districts from the additional expense of having to pay matching Social Security contributions to anyone desiring to serve in this critical safety role.

Mr. Speaker, it is a win-win-win. Schools get armed and trained by professionals. The schools can hire those professionals at a reduced rate and enjoy the additional savings. The law enforcement officer professionals can continue to serve their communities by protecting those very kids in their communities without financial penalty.

The last bill in the package is the Securing Our Schools Act, which would enhance school security, including doubling school resource officers, hiring more school-based mental health counselors, and expanding the nonprofit security grant program.

Mr. Speaker, I think we all agree that we need to secure our schools to ensure another senseless crime doesn't happen in our communities.

Today, I pray for Santa Fe High School and the families who lost their loved ones. May 18, 2018, will forever be ingrained in me and etched on my heart.

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