by Tim Brown, Freedom OutPost:
Governor Abbott’s words need to be echoed across our land. When Americans turn back to God and begin to repent before Him, He has promised He will heal our land, and a lot of that healing will come through true justice, not more gun confiscation.
Finally! There is a governor who voices the truth about crimes committed with guns. Texas Governor Greg Abbott spoke a couple of weeks ago at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas and during his speech, he said what many of us have been saying for years and that is the problem we face as a country has nothing to with guns, but hearts that are not filled with the Spirit of God.
“The answer to gun violence is not to take guns away, the answer is to strengthen the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” Abbot said during his speech. “The problem is not guns, it’s hearts without God.”
The Texas Observer reported:
Beyond installing the Lord in godless hearts, the only policy endorsed by the conservative leaders who spoke at the convention was putting more guns in the hands of trained teachers and school guards. Abbott pointed out that Texas lawmakers “already authorized our teachers to be armed in our schools.”
President Donald Trump even found his way to the same talking point. “We want highly trained teachers to carry concealed weapons,” said Trump. “When [attackers] know there are guns inside, they’re not going in.” (The arena itself was a gun-free zone — a safety precaution under U.S. Secret Service orders.)
So, pay attention here. Abbott is not saying just to sit around and pray and read the Bible. Those are things one needs to do for sure, but he also talks about putting feet to your prayers. In other words, often God uses us in accomplishing the very answer to the prayer we pray. After all, prayer is simply aligning ourselves with God’s revealed will in His Word. We aren’t manipulating Him or turning Him into some genie to do our bidding.
The idea of letting teachers carry concealed in schools is a good one, actually. It’s one I support far above putting more police officers in schools since all that does it grow government, which in turn, dips more into our pockets to fund something that is our duty as citizens.
Abbott also presented 22 ideas that could be done to help make schools more secure.
1. Adding “more behavioral counseling with increase of staffing” at schools.
2. “Creating threat assessment teams.” Abbott said the development of a statewide threat assessment program received universal support during the roundtable.
3. Mandating “better coordination between school and law enforcement officials.”
4. Creating “programs that reward students for sharing information” about potential shooters.
5. Implementing strategies that “make it easier to share information.”
6. Upgrading “physical facilities, especially entryways, exits and cameras” to protect schools.
7. Creating “a statewide intelligence-monitoring service concerning social media of students.”
8. Encouraging schools to hire “early intervention counselors starting even as early as kindergarten, certainly elementary.”
9. “Hardening our schools” to make them physically more secure against school shooters.
10. Ensuring school administrators better share information about potentially dangerous students among schools across the state.
11. Mandating “collaboration between law enforcement and schools” to create emergency action plans.
12. Creating “comprehensive training, informing students, parents and teachers how to relay information.”
13. Putting officers at “the front” of schools.
14. Improving “training for the school marshal program,” which trains teachers and staff to carry firearms on campus.
15. Boosting funding for the school marshal program, to make sure every school can participate if it wants to.
16. Increasing parent accountability. “How in the world can a parent either not know about or not be accountable for a situation where a student may be bringing a gun or a knife to a school?” Abbott said. “Parents are partly responsible for this and need to be held accountable.”
17. “Mandating parent training.”
18. Intervening with students who “have demonstrated challenges, probably through a more robust school counselor process – intervening into behavior that could lead to school shootings.”
19. Developing threat-assessment programs for all schools in Texas.
20. Putting more metal detectors in schools. “They work for some schools, in other settings they may not work,” the governor said. “It needs to be one of the strategies on the table.”
21. Identifying mental health challenges for students and helping respond to those challenges and get students the counseling they need.
22. Creating an app to view streaming video of school security cameras. “Why can we not allow parents, students and law enforcements and others to be able to monitor, basically on a 24-7 basis, the cameras in these schools?” Abbott said.
However, when it comes to the spiritual aspect of the situation, Abbott is right on point.
Following the shooting at Santa Fe High School on Friday, Abbott tweeted, “This Bible verse was on t-shirts at the Santa Fe Texas church service I attended today. They truly are #SantaFeStrong. #SantaFeHighSchool #txlege.”
The verse mentioned came from the New Testament Book of 2 Corinthians:
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