Messages from Congresswoman Hayes

Dear Friend,

Yesterday, I introduced my first resolution, House Resolution 231, which would ensure that federal funds are never used to train or arm school personnel with firearms. Teachers, students, and parents agree - arming teachers won’t make anyone safer.

Schools are meant to be a refuge for students to learn and build a future. Devastatingly, communities from Newtown, Connecticut to Parkland, Florida know that this safe space has the potential to be a site of unthinkable tragedy. We can all agree that we want to protect our nation’s children from gun violence and provide a learning space absent the omnipresent threat of danger.

However, federal dollars should never be siphoned away from student learning to be used for the training and arming of teachers. Like 73% of teachers, I would have never wanted to have the responsibility of securing a firearm in a room of 20 students, with or without training. I could never imagine explaining to a parent that it was my firearm that accidentally injured their child. As the wife of a police officer, I would never want my husband, or any first responder, to have to enter an active shooter situation and be forced to decide whether an armed person was a teacher protecting their students or a shooter threatening them.

Not only would arming teachers be an unconscionable expectation of school personnel and law enforcement, it would be ineffective. Of 225 incidents of campus gun violence between 1999 and 2018, trained armed personnel or school resource officers failed to disarm an active shooter 99% of the time. My resolution ensures this ill-conceived policy could not be put in place.

Please do not hesitate to contact me in the future. To keep up with my work in Congress, please sign up for my e-newsletter here.

Sincerely,

Jahana Hayes

Member of Congress