GOP pushes to arm staff, eliminate 'ineffective' gun-free school zones after Nashville shooting

House Republicans this week put forward three proposals aimed at making it easier to train and arm school staff to defend themselves from school shooters, just days after a school shooting in Nashville took the lives of three young students and three staff members.

The March 27 shooting at The Covenant School, a private religious school, once more prompted Democrats to call for more gun control measures. But Republican lawmakers introduced three bills based on the idea that the best way to protect schools is to make them less of a target.

"Gun-free zones are ineffective and make our schools less safe. Since 1950, 94 percent of mass public shootings have occurred in places where citizens are banned from having guns," Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said this week. "Banks, churches, sports stadiums, and many of my colleagues in Congress are protected with firearms. Yet children inside the classroom are too frequently left vulnerable."

Massie and more than 20 House Republicans introduced the Safe Students Act on Thursday, which would repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. He said repealing that law would make it easier for state and local governments to set their own firearms rules.

Massie’s bill is supported by groups like the Gun Owners of America, DC Project – Women for Gun Rights and the American Firearms Association.

"More than three decades of evidence since the passage of the 'Gun-Free School Zones Act' shows us that those who wish to do harm to others specifically target schools because they know everyone there is a sitting duck," said Patrick Parsons of The American Firearms Association. "These 'gun free zones' don't work, they empower criminals and endanger students, teachers and staff."

Also on Thursday, Rep. Mike Garcia, R-Calif., proposed legislation on his own that redirect unused COVID funding meant for schools so state education agencies can fund school security improvements. Those improvements include physical security measures but also armed school resource officers.

Garcia’s bill aims to hire at least two armed officers for every 500 students at a school, and the lawmaker noted that recent data shows fewer than half of schools have a resource officer on campus for a least one day a week.

"Nobody in this country wants to see these tragic events continue, and now we must work together to find solutions to deter future violence from taking place," said Garcia, who called his bill a "commonsense" measure aimed at hardening schools against violent crimes.

A third bill offered on Thursday, from Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., takes a similar approach and establishes a federal grant program aimed at boosting school security, including by training and hiring veterans and former police officers as school safety officers.

Mass shooting events have typically led to little in the way of new legislation, as Republicans and Democrats have opposing ideas on how to prevent them. Last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre accused Republicans of doing "nothing" in the wake of the Nashville shooting, and again called for new gun control laws.

"We need to pass an assault weapons ban, mandate universal background checks, require safe storage of guns, hold manufacturers accountable," she said. "These are just commonsense policies with broad public support."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-pushes-arm-staff-eliminate-ineffective-gun-free-school-zones-after-nashville-shooting

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Is nothing sacred? Foul-mouthed woke protesters are accused of destroying a BIBLE while trying to shut down conservative event at upstate NY public university

Woke protestors were accused of destroying a bible while screaming down a conservative speaker at the University of Albany on Tuesday.

Conservative speaker Ian Haworth posted a picture of a crumpled up bible which he said protestors destroyed 'for no reason whatsoever' while they were shouting down his remarks about free speech on college campuses.

He had been invited to the public university to speak by its chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), an organization dedicated to promoting conservative politics founded by right-wing activist Charlie Kirk.

But as he began his presentation, Haworth said a crowd of students 'stormed' into the room and began shouting profanities at him, calling him a fascist member of the KKK, and even forming a conga line and dance circle to prevent him from speaking. He noted that the protesters did help themselves to the event's pizza.

Haworth was eventually able to continue his speech after law enforcement and faculty helped remove the disruptive students. In their 'official response' to the incident, the Young Democrat Socialists of America group which organized the protest said their removal was 'a clear suppression of free speech.'

Haworth took to Twitter to share photos and videos from the event, which showed a large group of people clearly preventing him from speaking by screaming and dancing, a tactic he referred to as 'the heckler's veto.'

He wrote that his planned discussion was about how he felt 'free speech is being destroyed on college campuses.'

'Like clockwork, some deranged protesters showed up and used the heckler's veto to try and shut down the event,' he wrote.

He posted videos of the protestors shouting things like 'F**k TPUSA,' 'Trans rights are human rights,' 'F**k Ian,' 'F**k you, fascists,' and 'No cops, no KKK, no TPUSA.' Haworth noted that he was Jewish.

At one point, a woman could be seen screaming 'This is what free speech looks like.'

In a video showing the protesters dancing in a conga line, Haworth wrote 'Not one person seemed concerned that this is a traditional Cuban carnival dance, and is therefore an act of cultural appropriation.'

Haworth published a piece in the Washington Examiner reflecting on the event, in which he wrote 'It's spectacularly ironic that these students aggressively attempted to prevent free speech during an event dedicated to the importance of free speech on college campuses.'

'Yes, the event was able to proceed after several hours, but only after protesters were escorted away by police. The fact remains, as these activists demonstrated, that college campuses are no longer a place for ideas to flourish. They're where ideas go to die.'

In their official response, the protesters accused Haworth of being an 'infamous transphobic alt-right figure,' and that his presence was a 'clear danger and significant threat to the many queer students at the University.'

The group said 'students attended the event as a peaceful demonstration of queer solidarity and joy,' and that their rights to free speech were denied them when authorities later removed them so the event could continue.

They insisted that was 'ironic considering that TPUSA and their guest Ian Haworth claim to uphold these rights.'

After quoting a number of rules in the student handbook they claimed were violated in the removal of dancing and screaming students from a lecture, the group demanded the university install a number of gender affirming measures. They also asked that any pictures of videos of them at the protest be removed from the internet.

In a statement to Fox News, the University of Albany said 'Consistent with the mission of an institution of higher learning, we expect members of our community to be able to voice their views in a manner that promotes constructive dialogue and honors UAlbany's commitment to freedom of expression.'

'This is especially important when it involves speech that members of our community find offensive or objectionable.'

'Our constitutional obligation to protect speech, even when that speech fundamentally conflicts with our core values, is a pillar of our democratic system. We are equally committed to fostering an environment in which all students feel safe and included — and that the right to protest is also protected.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11948099/Woke-protesters-shut-conservative-event-publicly-funded-upstate-New-York-college.html

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Supreme Court Tells Maine to Stop Religiously Discriminating. Maine Gets Creative, Does It Anyway

Last term, in Carson v. Makin, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Maine could not prevent parents from using otherwise generally available state school choice funds at religious schools simply because those schools provided religious instruction. But the state is back at it again, discriminating against families and the religious schools they want to send their kids to.

Crosspoint Church, which operates the Christian school that two of the Carson plaintiffs attended, is suing Maine state officials in response to a law that, once again, tries to keep private religious (or “sectarian”) schools from receiving tuition assistance program funds, this time by adding an eligibility requirement that they must comply with the state’s LGBT anti-discrimination policy.

The Pine Tree State just can’t seem to take a hint.

Maine does not operate public schools in every town, particularly in rural far northern Maine, but students must still attend K-12 schools. That means that in many cases, religious schools are the only option available for families looking for a quality local education.

For the first 100 years of its tuition assistance program, the state allowed families and children to choose any school using tuition assistance dollars—whether the schools were public or private, religious or secular.

But in 1981, the state enacted a new restriction: Any school receiving tuition assistance payments had to be “nonsectarian,” having no “religious practice” involved. A school could be named after a patron saint of the Catholic Church, for example, but teachers could not celebrate those ideas or even add value-laden concepts into the school curriculum.

In separating schools that were religious in name only from schools that actually practiced religion, lawmakers thought they could keep “truly” religious schools from accessing publicly available funds.

The plaintiff families in Carson v. Makin argued that the state program’s “nonsectarian” requirement violated the U.S. Constitution by discriminating against religion, and last year, the Supreme Court agreed.

The court relied on its decisions in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer (2017) and Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020) to perform a straightforward resolution of the case. In Trinity Lutheran, the court held that Missouri could not discriminate against otherwise eligible recipients of public benefits because of their religion. And in Espinoza, the court held unconstitutional a provision of the Montana Constitution that barred aid to a school “controlled in whole or in part by any church, sect, or denomination.”

In Carson v. Makin, the Supreme Court determined that when private individuals use taxpayer funding to choose a religious K-12 school for their children, those individuals are not using public money to “establish” a religion—something that would be prohibited under the First Amendment to the Constitution. They’re simply making the best educational choice for their children.

Less than a year later, Maine education officials are back in federal court.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Carson, Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey released a statement saying he was “terribly disappointed and disheartened” by the outcome. What’s more, Frey stressed that religious schools were still ineligible for the tuition program because of their religious stance on sexuality and gender—positions that he called “fundamentally at odds with values we hold dear.”

Frey promised to explore with “members of the Legislature statutory amendments to address the Court’s decision and ensure that public money is not used to promote discrimination, intolerance, and bigotry.” It was clear that to keep discriminating against religious schools, the Maine Legislature would need to get creative.

The outcome of Frey’s promised “exploration” was a law requiring academic institutions participating in the state’s school choice program to adhere to the Maine Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Originally, all religious schools were exempt from the nondiscrimination provisions in the Human Rights Act to accommodate their religious beliefs. But in anticipation of Carson, the Maine Legislature narrowed the religious exemption in the Human Rights Act to protect only religious schools that do not participate in the tuition program.

Without an exemption from the LGBT discrimination provisions, religious schools can face investigations, complaints, and fines for teaching students in accordance with their sincerely held religious beliefs on sexual orientation and gender identity.

In its case on behalf of Crosspoint Church, public interest law firm First Liberty Institute calls the narrowed exemption a “poison pill” that deters religious schools from participating in the tuition assistance program and perpetuates the exact religious discrimination that the Supreme Court had already determined was unconstitutional.

In addition, the lawsuit points to a tweet by then-state House Speaker Ryan Fecteau in which he said that he’d “anticipated the ludicrous decision from the far-right [Supreme Court].” Fecteau stopped just shy of saying that in Maine’s search for ways to continue discriminating, they’d had a head start.

The law is on Crosspoint’s side. Not only has the Supreme Court already struck down the tuition program once for being unconstitutional, it has also clarified that a “government fails to act neutrally when it proceeds in a manner intolerant of religious beliefs or restricts practices because of their religious nature.”

The statements of government officials Frey and Fecteau are nothing if not intolerant.

Apparently, one lawsuit wasn’t enough to deter Maine from religious discrimination. Maybe this time, it will take the hint.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/04/05/supreme-court-tells-maine-to-stop-discriminating-against-religious-schools-maine-does-it-anyway

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