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Letter to Ted Cruz Regarding Guns
Senator Cruz,
In looking at your proposal to have armed guards in every school in the US, I have a few logistical questions for you. Assuming you will have to have at least two guards on duty 12 hours a day meaning you will need four per school in shifts how will you pay for that ?
The cost would be at least 20 billion dollars per year forever.
There are 130,930 K-12 schools in the states, with more than 50 million students attending the schools.. I assume you will also need to have armed guards at colleges and universities as well. There are over 6,000 colleges in the U.S. and thousands of technical training institutes which will need armed guards as well.
Each guard would have to be paid a total cost of 50000 per guard ( salary and benefits) times 4 or 200,000 per school
Guns and ammunition perhaps a thousand dollars per officer plus the cost of lockers etc so let’s say 2000 per officer for 50,000 dollars per year.
That adds up to about 30 billion dollars per year
If you harden schools, that would add 100,000 dollars or another 10 billion or so, and we have not talked about the extensive modification to the school buildings involved with many only one entrance and exit to the school building as you proposed.
If you extend this to colleges and other educational institutions, you will need to add another 10 billion making it a grand total of 50 billion dollars per year .
How would pay for it? Would states pay it or local districts? or would the federal government pay it?
If local districts pay for it would you support tax increases to pay it or would schools have to eliminate such things as music art programs and sports programs?
It would be a lot cheaper to ban assault weapons and have universal background checks. which 85% of Americans support. Why can’t you accept this common sense proposal? Why do you insist that people should be able to buy assault weapons? they are useless for hunting, and absurdly disproportionate a weapon for self-defense. We don’t allow people to buy machine guns, and anti-tank weapons or flame throwers, or bombs so why do we allow people to buy assault weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition? .
Finally, why should the country do all of this to protect the right to buy assault weapons? What about the right to go to school without the fear that a gun nut armed with an assault weapon will shoot up your school?
Finally, given that there are over 150,000 educational institutes in the U.S., and there are no more than 25 school shootings per year, don’t you think your proposal is an absurd over-reaction? The reality is that 99.9% of schools do not experience a shooting incident in any one year.
On a related topic, why are you opposed to universal background checks especially expanding background checks to gun shows, and online sales? You are no doubt aware that terrorist groups, including domestic terrorists, buy their weapons at gun shows because they don’t need to do a background check or even show ID,s and half of all sales are done at gun shows, or online. What makes guns show an exception to the gun background check procedures? Don’t you agree that all gun sales should be screened to make sure prohibited people are not buying guns? Expanding background checks would not be an undue burden on law-abiding citizens and 85% of Americans agree that there should be universal background checks.
Furthermore, you are opposed to adding the” No-fly list terrorist watch list” to the background check procedures. Why do you believe a person on the no-fly list should be able to buy a gun? Do you support the right of terrorists to buy guns?
You are also opposed to the federal government encouraging states to enact red flag laws. You stated that red flag laws don’t work. Do you believe that if someone is threatening to use a gun to commit mass murder or to kill themselves, nothing can or should be done to take guns away from them? The federal government’s role in this is merely to facilitate states in enacting their own laws and to help pay for it. Why are you opposed to this? This is also supported by 90 % of Americans.
Thanks for reading my message, which I have posted on my blog, the world according to cosmos
Jake Aller
Retired state department foreign service officer
Living in gun-free South Korea
Ted Cruz Flayed Over Ludicrous Idea For Preventing School Shootings
According to the Republican senator, it’s the number of doors, not guns, that schools should be worried about.
According to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the solution to school shootings is fewer doorways and more guns.
After 19 children and two teachers were killed at a Texas elementary school Tuesday by a man armed with an assault rifle, the state’s senator suggested that schools would be safer if there was only one way in or out.
“One of the things that everyone agreed is don’t have all of these unlocked back doors. Have one door into and out of the school and have … armed police officers at that door,” he told Fox News Wednesday.
Armed police officers were at the door quite quickly, thanks to several 911 calls. Those officers shot at the gunman and still did not prevent the deaths of those 21 victims.
“If that had happened,” Cruz said, “if those federal grants had gone to this school, when that psychopath arrived, the armed police officers could have taken him out. And we’d have 19 children and two teachers still alive.”
He accused Democrats calling for gun reform of “empty political posturing” after a tragedy and then immediately complained that Democrats blocked legislation he introduced nearly a decade ago that would spend $300 million on federal grants to “harden schools to make them safer” with upgrades like bulletproof doors, bulletproof glass and armed police officers.
Cruz: Have one door… and have that one door, armed police officers at that door. If that had happened.. when that psychopath had arrived, the armed police officers could’ve taken him out… pic.twitter.com/YnOCDs9GAZ
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 25, 2022
The U.S. has significantly more mass shootings than any other developed country, some of the loosest controls over who can buy guns and what sort of firearms are allowed.
Elected Republicans have repeatedly called for heightened security and mental health resources to protect children from shooting massacres, even though the data has shown again and again that the U.S. is an outlier on guns, not mental health or school security.
House Democrats and some Republicans have passed two bills that would tighten gun sales regulations by expanding background checks ― measures that consistently attract support from a majority of Americans in polls. But the legislation has stalled due to resistance from Senate Republicans, many of whom receive enormous campaign support from gun lobbyists.
Cruz, for example, has received nearly $750,000 during his time in office, according to campaign finance tracker Open Secrets.
His proposal to cut back on doors instead of guns met immediate backlash online. See the reaction below.
Should probably check with the fire department about this “one door” plan https://t.co/kiVPqUDKSP
— George Zornick (@gzornick) May 25, 2022
“I will not rest until every last school in this country is designed and operated like the SHU at a maximum security prison!” https://t.co/WsQXPpCCqz
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 25, 2022
The mass murderer in Buffalo literally killed an armed police officer in the grocery store, but Ted Cruz and Republicans are still sticking to the illogical fantasy that we need more guns to solve the problem of gun violence. https://t.co/OEM1b3Ud6j
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) May 25, 2022
NEW: Ted Cruz, speaking on the Uvalde shooting, talks about “what we need to do to harden schools, including not having unlocked back doors, including not having unlocked doors to classrooms.”
Yup, the issue here is doors. Not guns. Doors.
— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 25, 2022
So @tedcruz says the solution to the epidemic of mass shootings in America is to ban all back doors. https://t.co/TtG8742PiM
— Katie S. Phang (@KatiePhang) May 26, 2022
This is Kirkwood High School where I graduated. It is a campus with some 12+ buildings on 3 streets. So, @tedcruz tell me about how they should lock all doors but one and put armed cops on it.
Performative jackassery to divert us again. It’s the guns you idiot. pic.twitter.com/GPffNQkBYr
— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 26, 2022
senator Ted Cruz comes out bravely against doors.
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) May 26, 2022
Hey @tedcruz you complete pile of shit, how about a big fucking moat around the school? How about shrinking the school down so it fits in a safe? How about putting it on the moon? https://t.co/ta43zeUWhU
— Tim Heidecker (@timheidecker) May 25, 2022
How many K-12 public schools, districts, and students are there? What does the American student population look like? And how much are we, as a nation, spending on the education of these youth?
These data points can give perspective to the implications and potential impact of education policies. The Education Week library provides answers to these questions, and some other enlightening facts, below.
This page will be updated when new federal data becomes available. Federal data is typically released several years after it is collected.
SCHOOLS AND DISTRICTS
How many schools are there in the U.S.?
There are 130,930 public and private K-12 schools in the U.S., according to 2017-18 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Here’s how they break down:
- All: 130,930
- Elementary schools: 87,498
- Secondary schools: 26,727
- Combined schools: 15,804
- Other: 901
for more on Ted Cruz opposition to gun control see the following
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ted+cruz+on+gun+control&atb=v314-1&ia=web
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