Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said Tuesday that the Federal Commission on School Safety she leads would not be examining how guns play a role in school violence.
“Will your commission look at role of firearms as it relates to gun violence in our schools?” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked DeVos at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing.
DeVos hedged at first by saying the commission will examine the several issue areas identified by the Trump administration, but when pressed again by Leahy on the same question, she said this issue would not be examined.
“That is not part of the commission’s charge, per se,” she said.
A March statement from President Trump did give the commission some scope to examine guns. For example, Trump called on the Justice Department to partner with state and local law enforcement to provide firearms training for school staff.
It also called on states to adopt “Extreme Risk Protection Orders” that will allow them to ban firearms from people who are a “demonstrated threat to themselves or others,” and called on the commission to study “age restrictions for certain firearm purchases.”
But none of those issues get at what Democrats are trying to address, which is how more severe limits need to be placed on gun ownership.
Leahy pressed DeVos further by asking whether the commission would be examining how other countries with students who play video games manage to have low school violence rates. But DeVos said the commission would not take that step.
“Not per se,” she said.
And when he asked DeVos whether an 18-year-old student should be able to buy an AR-15 style rifle, she said that should be left to Congress.
“I know that this body and your counterparts on the other side of the Capitol have addressed a number of these issues, and I know that you’re going to continue to debate them and discuss them,” she said.
