Oklahoma Education Secretary Ryan Walters on Wednesday said more guns in schools could be the solution to preventing massacres like Tuesday's in Uvalde, Texas, which left at least 19 elementary school students and two teachers dead.
"Teachers, administrators, school staff — absolutely, we should ensure that some of them are armed, so that gunmen do not enter into our schools with the ability to inflict this kind of damage without being confronted by someone with a gun," Walters said in a video posted to social media, filmed selfie-style from inside a car.
The Associated Press reports multiple armed police officers and security guards were on the scene of the Uvalde shooting before it even began and all failed to stop the gunman from carrying out the mass killing. Armed first responders outside the school allowed the attacker to spend up to an hour inside.
"This is not a gun issue," Walters said.
The United States has, by far, the most guns per person of any country in the world, "more than twice as many per capita as war-torn Yemen, the next highest country on the list," NBC News reports, and is the only country in the world where gun massacres occur at schools with regularity.
There have been 27 school shootings in the U.S. so far in 2022, according to Education Week.
NPR reports firearms are the leading cause of death for American children, outpacing car crashes and cancer in 2020.
