Madison, Wis. — Wisconsin Gun Owners, Inc. (WGO) — Wisconsin’s only no-compromise gun rights organization — opposes calls by Sen. Chris Murphy for more gun control in the wake of the Robb Elementary school shooting. The shooting took place in Uvalde, Texas.
According to WGO, 30 percent of Texas schools have armed teachers and staff; However, Robb Elementary, where 19 students and two adults were killed, does not appear to be one. Robb Elementary is among most Texas schools subject to the Federal Gun-Free Zone Act, which prohibits concealed carry on the premises, according to the school’s own rules and codes of conduct.
“Thirty percent of Texas’s schools enjoy armed protection by teachers and staff, and this killer did not choose those schools as his target,” said WGO Executive Director Thomas Leager. “He chose Robb Elementary for a reason — and that is because it was unprotected.”
According to Leager, it was “another example of the dangers of sending our children to schools that are labeled Gun-Free Zones, which are really just Criminal Safe Zones. This tragic event is not a condemnation of the Second Amendment but an example of the dangerous failure of gun control.”
Leager added that Wisconsin Gun Owners, Inc. would continue to support the right of teachers and school staff to be armed on school property as both a deterrent and defense against madmen that would commit these heinous acts against the most vulnerable among us.
The state gun rights organization calls on teachers to approach the issue of self-defense from an educational viewpoint rather than a politicized knee-jerk reaction. With firearm education on par with police officers’ training — in Wisconsin, that is less than 40 hours’ classroom and range training — there is no reason teachers should not be equipped and prepared to defend their students.
