Action Alert: Save Our Schoolchildren: Tell Your Representative to Vote NO on H.B. 868

Republican Texas State Representative Dan Flynn has authored the so-called Teacher's Protection Act, H.B. 868, and it must be stopped.

This bill would authorize Texas teachers to use force or deadly force "on school property, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event in defense of the educator's person or in defense of students of the school that employs the educator".  

Get a load of how scary that "school-sponsored event" language is....

The Bill even allows deadly force to be used in defense of property of the school district.

The Bill also grants civil immunity so that educators cannot be held liable when they kill a student.

Now I am an experienced teacher and am 100% pro-teacher but every teacher in this state with a lick of sense knows that even being allowed to be armed in schools now is just about the world's worse idea, and this one just exacerbates the horrors of it.  Schools can be scary places sometimes.  They are underfunded and overcrowded and sometimes filled with young people on the edge of desperation.  If you are going to be a teacher, you should be willing to risk your life for those students, not take theirs to protect yourself.  

I have put my body between students to protect them and I have been assaulted in the process of doing that.  I would never harm a student to protect myself or in the protection of another student, though.   I certainly would never kill a student. No sane teacher would do this.

Not using deadly force is  a hard decision to make in the heat of the moment, though, when you are in real danger and you are afraid.  You might make the wrong choice at such a moment if you had a gun on you.  You need to not have the gun that makes it easy to act out of fear in that moment.  You need to not choose that profession if you cannot go into it unarmed and willing to be that brave.

Please call your legislators today, Mamas, and tell them you categorically reject H.B. 868 and that they must vote against it. (You District Two Mamas might also want to seriously consider voting this scary Rep. Flynn out of office as well, please.)

Hurry, Mamas. Please.