Sen. Kamala Harris criticized President Donald Trump’s call to arm teachers with guns, saying she didn’t “understand how that makes any sense.”
The California Democrat shared her concerns Wednesday at a Judiciary Committee hearing on school safety, The Hill reports. The president took the controversial stance of arming teachers in the wake of the shooting massacre last month at Stoneman Douglas High School.
“As a career prosecutor I have worked with many communities where children go to sleep each night hearing gunfire and so what we’re proposing is that those children — remember Sandy Hook [Elementary School] we’re talking about six- and seven-year-olds — are supposed to go to school and look at the front of their class at their second-grade teacher and she’s going to be strapped with a gun,” she said.
Harris also questioned FBI associate deputy director David Bowdich about the possibility of implicit bias among teachers who are armed, according to CNS News.
“There’s an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that harsh discipline protocols disproportionately impact children of color,” she said. “We know that (from) the studies that talk about what the rates are in terms of suspensions and expulsions from schools.”
She continued: “Do you have any concern about a policy that would result in arming teachers, and concern that we should make sure that if something like that would occur, that there would be training around implicit bias?”
Bowdich agreed that training “on all fronts” would be necessary to overcome this sort of bias, but did not give further details.
The Trump administration on Monday unveiled proposals designed to make schools safer, including a plan to provide school staff with voluntary firearm training.