U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) visited a North Texas high school last week to survey security upgrades implemented at the campus.
The upgrades to R.L. Paschal High School were funded through the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, enacted in the wake of the deadly Uvalde school shooting last May. In addition to expanding funding for enforcing “red flag” laws, a typical feature of anti-gun legislation in some states, the act also allocated federal taxpayer money for improving mental health services and school security, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
“I think we tried to do our best to be responsive and come up with bipartisan legislation that isn’t universally popular, but sometimes it’s misunderstood,” said Cornyn, one of the bill’s chief architects, speaking with NBC 5.
He toured the Fort Worth ISD high school, one of the first public school systems to receive a grant from the new law. The district received $360,000, some of which is reportedly budgeted for specialized radios and other security upgrades.
In defending his support of the law, Cornyn claimed that its enforcement does not infringe on the Second Amendment and that law-abiding gun owners have nothing to fear.
“[T]he area where we have been able to find consensus, bipartisan consensus, is keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and people with mental health problems,” Cornyn said.
Still, Cornyn was criticized last year by pro-gun organizations, who saw the move as a reactionary equivocation in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.
“John Cornyn is the definition of a two-faced politician. He claims to support the Second Amendment, but is actually working to eviscerate our gun rights by cutting deals with anti-gun Democrats – and when his constituents publicly held him accountable, he called them a mob,” said Dudley Brown, president of the National Association for Gun Rights, in a press release last June.
While the red flag component proved controversial, increased funding for school security has seemed to find few detractors. However, some districts in North Texas are moving faster than others to institute effective security measures to prevent violence on school campuses.
Dallas ISD, for instance, has had multiple firearm incidents transpire in the last year — some of which resulted in serious injury. It is currently unclear whether the troubled district has applied for a grant from the Safer Communities Grant, like Fort Worth ISD, or explored some other available technological security services.
“I get back to the basic premise which is, no kid should have to go to school being worried — ‘am I going to be safe’ — and no parent should have to send their child to school wondering about their safety. And this is all designed to address that,” said Cornyn during the visit, per NBC.