Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday said that the Republican suggestion to limit school entrances to a single door to stop mass shootings is the “definition of insanity.”
“The idea that us being the only developed country where this happens routinely — especially in terms of the mass shootings — is somehow a result of the design of the doorways on our school buildings is the definition of insanity, if not the definition of denial,” Buttigieg told George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “The Week.”
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He didn’t mention any names.
But Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz most notably pitched the single-door strategy to protect children from attacks by gunmen armed with assault rifles. Schools would be better protected by “having one door that goes in and out of the school [and] having armed police officers at that one door,” he insisted.
More than 100 trained, armed officers on the scene were unable to stop the killing of 19 children and two teachers in the attack last month at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde ― Cruz’s home state. It’s difficult to understand how a sole officer stationed at a single entrance could have made a critical difference.
States with warmer climates often have small, free-standing classroom buildings spread throughout a school campus, each with one or two entrances. That would mean armed guards or police officers would need separate security stations at each classroom door opening to the outside under Cruz’s plan.
Yet the “strategy” has long been a talking point of the gun industry, and was pitched as a solution after an earlier Texas school mass shooting in 2018 by then-Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
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Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said if he were mayor during a mass shooting, like the one in Uvalde, the worst part would be having to talk “to families of people who have lost their loved ones, and knowing that nothing you can do will bring those loved ones back.”
“We have a horrific scourge of gun violence in this country, and, you know, as mayor — as every mayor is doing around the country — you take the steps that you can to reduce community violence, to invest in partnerships, to make sure that you’ve taken the steps you can locally,” he said.
But “you’re also looking at Washington to say will anything be different this time?” Buttigieg noted. “Will we actually acknowledge the reasons why we are the only country, the only developed country where this happens on a routine basis?”
Check out his comments here:
