Heidi Alexander: “This is a surprising development for me. I understand the terrible nature of the problem, but I think it is so important…”

“This is a surprising development for me. I understand the terrible nature of the problem, but I think it is so important that we not lead the American people into thinking we could solve these community problems by asking Washington to do it. If we have an obstacle here, if there is no access to a registry, let's change that. I would love to have a Toomey-Manchin bill with their names on it to give every single school board, 100,000 schools the tools they need to do the job. But they should be accountable for it, not the Senator from Tennessee. They should be accountable for it. ADM Hyman Rickover was the leader and inventor, really, of our nuclear Navy, and our nuclear Navy has never had a problem--never had a death I should say--from the reactors on our nuclear submarines. I think the reason is because Admiral Rickover hired every one of the captains. He told them: You have two responsibilities, one is the ship and one is the reactor. If something happens to the reactor, your career is over. I think putting the captain on the flagpole and making it clear whose job it is to be accountable for safe schools is a big part of it. If we make it look as though somehow the Senate takes care of making a school in Pennsylvania or West Virginia or Tennessee safe because we passed some bill and wrote some regulation and caused everybody to fill out a lot of forms in the 46 States that already have criminal background checks of their own, then I think we have done a disservice.…”