Vice President Pence In Texas Talks School Safety, But What Are U.S. Lawmakers From N. Texas Saying?
DALLAS (CBS11) - In San Antonio Friday afternoon, Vice President Mike Pence promised President Donald Trump will take action after the deadly high school shooting in Parkland, Florida that has outraged and devastated the nation.
Seventeen students and teachers were killed in the attack.
"When the President meets with our nation's Governors in the days ahead, he will make school safety the top priority," Pence said.
He said the administration will do everything it can to support the Broward County Sheriff's Office and the ongoing investigation. "Our Justice Department is already working with other agencies to study the intersection of mental health and criminality. As the President said yesterday, no child, no teacher should ever be in danger in an American school."
On Friday, the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, acknowledged the FBI received a tip about the gunman last month, but that the tips were missed.
In a speech on the Senate floor Thursday, Texas Senator John Cornyn said Congress must help law enforcement. "The policymakers need to come up with tools available to law enforcement and for the social media platforms to be able to monitor these sort of terroristic threats."
Cornyn said there has to be a similar effort for those threats as the efforts to track comments made on social media by members of Al-Qeada and ISIS and their sympathizers.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz says a bill he co-sponsored five years ago intended to prevent shootings at schools,but that it was filibustered by Senate Democrats. "Relevant to Parkland, one of the things Grassley-Cruz did was to substantially increase the funding for school safety - to put in place things like armed police officers and security guards to put in place things like metal detectors that might have helped prevent this crazed mad man."
He and Senator Cornyn also said the Senate needs to pass a bill requiring federal agencies and the states to upload criminal convictions to the background check system.
They say that may have prevented the mass shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas last year that killed 26 people and injured 20 others.
In a videotaped statement, Republican Congressman Michael Burgess of Lewisville said mental health is another concern. "Congress has prioritized making resources to those available if mental illness and will continue to do so."
In a statement, Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson of Dallas said, "...Since I believe gun control policies alone will not stop mass violence, I have remained a strong supporter of mental health reform. We have learned that many individuals who committed mass violence either lacked or sought mental health treatment, but were unable to get the treatment they needed..."
We asked the offices of eight other members of Congress from North Texas about potential solutions, but we haven't heard back yet.
Vice President Pence will spend most of Saturday in Dallas.
He'll address an "America First Policies" forum and then be the keynote speaker at the Dallas County Republican Party's Reagan Day Dinner Saturday evening before returning to Washington, D.C.