Heidi Alexander: “I applaud the Senators from Pennsylvania and from West Virginia for their concern. Of course, every single Senator would…”

“I applaud the Senators from Pennsylvania and from West Virginia for their concern. Of course, every single Senator would like, as the Senator from West Virginia said, to make sure every single child is safe in every single school. The question in my mind is, How does one do that? My mind goes back to a particularly horrific shooting in a school in the early 1990s and the country was revulsed by it and Congress acted. We are going to make every single school safe. So Congress passed the Gun-Free School Zones Act in about 1990, and the Supreme Court in a few years held it unconstitutional under the commerce clause, which isn't a problem here, but I opposed that then--I was U.S. Education Secretary then--because the way to make every child and every school safe is not the job of the U.S. Senate and U.S. Department of Education. That is not the way to do it. We have 40 million children, right. We have 100,000 schools, correct. We have 14,000 school boards. We have 100,000 principals. What this proposal would do is to put the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Congress--which currently has about a 10-percent approval rating-- in charge of making every single child in every single school safer than the local school board can, than the local legislator can, than the local Governor can, than the local community can, than the parents can. If we want safe schools, that is the job of parents, communities, school boards, and States.…”