I read a comment that said we should call schools 'wombs' so that the GOP will protect the kids...

“It’s about mental health,” says the party that consistently votes against improving mental healthcare (and literally every other kind of healthcare).

I’m Australian, we haven’t had a mass shooting since 1996 when the Port Arthur massacre happened in Tasmania. Following that our prime minister at the time introduced strict gun reform laws. I’m a primary/elementary school teacher and I cannot even imagine that kind of terror!! We watch what happens in the U.S in utter disbelief!! Such a tragic loss of lives and totally preventable. Sending so much love, strength and peace, from Country Victoria. Australia 🇦🇺 🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺🇦🇺

I served 15 years in the U.S Army and part of my job as an Armament Chief Warrant Officer was to investigate negligent discharges. I can tell you right now that if you give firearms to teachers, you're going to start seeing negligent discharges in classrooms, because if it can happen to combat servicemembers then it can definitely happen to anyone else. Arming teachers is a bad idea unless you want them to have the possibility of killing your children by accident even when there is no active shooter. There is no way that teachers are going to receive enough training to be safe around kids. I don't even trust cops or infantryman to use their weapons properly without endangering bystanders., so why would I trust a teacher with a lethal weapon?

It’s a “right” to own a weapon of war but a “privilege” to have healthcare to save you after you’re shot by one of those weapons. This country is sssooo screwed up.

Kudos to Beto O'Rourke for challenging Greg Abbott

It’s so exhausting going through this every single time.

“We need trip wires and man traps!” Yeah, that’s so much more practical than better gun laws. Yikes. People are creative.

As a teacher myself, I can tell you, most teachers would WALK OUT IN PROTEST, and go on strike, with full support of the union if you even tried to FORCE them to HAVE A GUN IN THE CLASSROOM. There was an armed guard at that school in Texas, it did no good. The gunman shot 2 policemen when they got there in fact, and did not go down when initially shot. It took 4 policemen to take him down. So if a teacher had a gun, it would NOT have made any difference at all, so if you're arguing with that logic, it's full of holes and ALREADY DISPROVEN. Oh!, and the gunman was in body armor, had two assault rifles, and 230 rounds. No 18-yr old should be able to access all that so easily.

It’s weird how the same people who were claiming that surgical masks were killing our kids don’t seem to think that firearms are that dangerous.

Not just Remove Guns , but destroying them , and Automatic life sentences for criminals caught with a firearm.

As a teacher: the idea of arming teachers is insane. Among other reasons that I have deep respect for SWAT teams is the amount of skills, expertise, and training that they have in order to handle the most dangerous situations. It's a full-time job requiring extensive training, not some side hustle we could be trained for in a professional development day, or even over an entire summer. Given that the amount of official training that we get for most things is perfunctory at best, how realistic is it that most teachers, even if they *were* willing, would be able to get the proper amount of training and attain the necessary knowledge and experience in order to be responsible and confident with a weapon in the most chaotic of circumstances? I've heard the idea put forward that we could have a comprehensive weapons course, but even if enough funding for and availability of such a course were somehow made available to everyone (and bear in mind that our schools are so underfunded that most of the money spent on classroom supplies is our own,) could we be expected to learn all we would need to know in order to handle what would amount to a war zone in the hallway, *while* protecting our own students? I could go into other complications, including the (in)feasibility of storing a weapon in such a way that it would be quickly accessible to a teacher but inaccessible to any troubled or mischief-minded student. I could explain the consequences if those security measures were breached even for a moment. I could talk about the total number of hours there are in a year (even if we included summer) and the sheer number of responsibilities teachers have to juggle even on a good day, but I suspect I would be preaching to the converted in this thread. Suffice to say, this kind of idea is typical of those who think they know all about education despite never setting foot in school except as a student or parent -- which is to say, full of ideas about how it can be done better without understanding how schools actually work. All moral questions aside -- and there are many -- from a practical standpoint, this idea would be a disaster.

"WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT POLITICAL?!" Me: Why aren't you?

I'm sorry, but if anyone were to tell me "I'd just love to volunteer to stand inside a school all day holding a rifle", I would not let that person anywhere near a school

"We can't stop bad people from doing bad things" is pretty bold coming from someone who's currently under MULTIPLE! indictments.

Good for Beto. Keep doing this.

My 7 year old sister fell asleep on my lap tonight after she told me that she's scared to go to school because someone told her about what happened in Texas. This broke my heart and made me cry.

"Laws are pointless" is also a weird take from someone who insists that they can end abortion by outlawing it.

"If trebuchets are outlawed, only outlaws will have trebuchets!"

Do these fools hear themselves? Gun laws need to change and pass the bill already.

"Laws are pointless' is a bold position for the Attorney General." Damn, that is a brilliant response!!!

So ARMED and TRAINED officers were injured trying to take that guy out, and in Buffalo the officer was killed trying to take the gunman out, but a TEACHER/school staffer can? LOL.....

Just so bad ass sad. Applauding you Mr. Colbert!

Greetings from Australia. We had a "RECKONING" in the '90s after another mass shooting killed 36. We banned all firearms and allowed people with a legitimate need to get a license and keep them in a locked gun cabinet. The only mass shootings since have been criminals killing other criminals. Saved the justice system a fortune. If you want a gun in Australia you can get one. It's a rigorous process but you can have your gun. Nothing semi-automatic, but who needs a semi-automatic gun outside of war? a terrible hunter?

If masks were far too traumatizing for children, how do you expect them to walk through a "Mantrap" everyday will affect them?

Curious note about Abbott's suggestion. He wanted ex-police and servicemen to volunteer. He does not even want to pay them.

"I imagine you're still trying to process yesterday's gun violence in Uvalde." No. No, I'm not. What is there to process? A mass shooting happens every single day in America. We've already seen all of this before. We've seen hundreds of kids be slaughtered, and literally nothing has changed. I'm not "processing;" I'm PISSED.

Cops got Beto out faster than they went into the Uvalde school house!

"Arm the teachers." You don't even trust the teachers to teach their subjects without massive unnecessary political oversight.

Thank you for showing Beto calling bullshit on their lie. We'll be voting for him.

Statement A: "the police are under no obligation to help you" Question A: "why do you need an AR-15?" Answer A: "see Statement A".

Reduce the number of guns! Seriously? Not hold these gangs and law breakers accountable?

I’m from India, 4 times the population of the US and much poorer, and not exactly the safest country in the world. For everything that we admire about the US, the gun culture there is something we simply don’t understand. The fact that someone on your news is even suggesting that you have to arm teachers is like something off a post apocalyptic movie. Just how you cannot enforce basic gun restrictions, which even work considerably well (barring illegal exceptions) in much more larger and more diverse and poorer country like India, is beyond me.

Imagine a place where this is a rarity, not commonplace… Wait a minute; that’s most of the world.

Teachers should just go out on strike until their workplace is made safe.

reminded there at 4:29 immediately of 10 Things I Hate About You: "'In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, For they in thee a thousand errors note; But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise, Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote'. Now, Shakespeare is a dead white guy, but he know his shit."

But life is so precious when you're talking about abortion not with gun control though smdh

“We need to look at mental health!” “So you’re going to figure out how to get everyone healthcare?” “No! Armed guards!”

4:30 if i was still a teacher, i would quit before using a gun in the workplace!!!!!!!!

This country is turning into an open air mental institution.

Beto O'Rourke nailed it I'll be voting for him in November because we need to have change enough is enough I don't want to hear any more about any kids getting killed it's heartbreaking it's heartwrenching and it breaks my heart you got to do something.

I’m a veteran and very capable of pulling apart, firing, and doing basically anything I want with a weapon. You have to climb way down the list far before my reaction is “arm teachers and put me in a school with one”. The military and police (very different, but let’s keep pretending they’re the same thing) are defensive mechanisms. If I’m your answer, you have an enormous problem and it’s bizarre that you think it’s not.

Florida is a location in Gauteng province, South Africa. It is located about 16 kilometres west of Johannesburg.

A lot of pro-gun control advocates say "Why do you need a gun, the police will protect and save you" Then we get this horrific instance where cops were too cowardly to uphold their oath and protect those kids that they refused to go in and stop the shooter from killing them. So then I ask you, why can't I have a gun and put myself in a better position to protect what matters most to me when there are cops that clearly care about their safety over those they are swarn to protect?

As a South African (a country considered unsafe) This is very wild. How can you possibly allow guns to be so unregulated. Even tragedy after tragedy you still refuse to regulate guns. You have "school shooting drills" when you should really only have" fire drills ". the funny part is that those advocating for "abortion bans " really forget about life once it's here. You guys are traumatizing your children. Hold elected officials accountable. That's what you preach to the rest of the world so do it.

Hey Stephen. I'm from Australia. We have had sensible gun laws here for decades. I am a walking example of why gun laws work. When I was in school around the time of the Columbine shooting, I was a very unstable child. I was bullied and picked on, I didn't have friends, I had a social disability that I didn't understand or even know I had and it was a very hard time for me. Had there been easy access to guns here like there is in so many parts of America, we would have had our very own Columbine massacre. Because there are gun laws and because I didn't have access to those weapons, I was completely deterred from the plans I had (yes, I had plans for what I wanted to do). As a result I was given the opportunity to mature and grow up. I was given the opportunity to develop better understandings of my own problems and disabilities. I was given the opportunity to keep living life. I wish I could get my message to people like Senator Marco Rubio who thinks that people will just go look for any other weapon to kill people with. It's just not true in the VAST majority of people. Guns provide an enormous ease of use and a detachment from the carnage they create. It's easy to dissociate from what you're doing when you can do it from a distance without any threat to you personally. Guns make such acts viable for the far less "determined". If you take away guns from those people, you take away their willingness to commit said atrocities. Not only would that stop the senseless murders happening constantly in America, it would also give those potential shooters a chance to grow up and become stable and learn to understand themselves and the world around them. It gives them a chance to grow up. It's not just the victims of the shootings that gun laws protect, it's also the potential shooters who won't be throwing away their lives. It forces them to deal with things within them. I am not ashamed to share my story. I want it to be a lesson for people. I could have been another statistic over here. Instead I was given a chance to grow up and understand myself. I would be happy if people could share my message and my story. Gun laws work, and they protect unstable people as well as those who they might have killed in a time of weakness. I was one of them. I know what it's like. I was able to learn from my own experiences, I hope others can as well.

REDUCE THE NUMBER OF STEPHEN COLBERT

Pass all the laws you want it doesn't matter, I will protect my family by any means necessary.

If the answer to guns is to have more guns, then we would be the safest country on the planet... which everyone can see we are not.

Retired teacher with 35 yrs experience, I will never hold a gun! Teachers love encouraging growth and live, not killing!

I used to help with schools to update their infrastructure, security & general appearance. One school system wanted to install digital locks on all doors, this was a few hundred doors which quickly kept getting reduced to only the essential doors several times. This was appalling & frustrating to watch & be a part of. Like many schools built during the great depression there is asbestos & it is occasionally replaced patch by patch because of how much it costs for proper removal. Some schools are in low sea level areas & storm hardening every possible entry point (doors, windows, vents, etc.) is next to impossible to keep in budget & the building is still not considered waterproof, just more resistant. Less & less of the money actually going towards the student's education, which is sickening. This supposed "man-trap" would be so ridiculously expensive for the structural, mechanical & electrical modifications alone that even the installation of one would most likely be infeasible & by code there needs to be multiple emergency exits for schools so you got to then hope you pick the right door to lay this kind of trap. This is a case of people laughable looking at a problem from the wrong perspective & blaming everything else but the real problem. Access to guns needs to needs better controls & laws. We as a people, need to shift for a damage control mindset to a preventative mindset.

"Texas the lone star state. That must also be it's Yelp rating" - Sheldon Cooper, The Big Bang Theory

I live here in uvalde, we are such a small town that it practically feels like we are just a big neighborhood or gated community, we're all so close everyone knows someone if not multiple people who lost their lives/loved ones, I have never ever seen this town so distraught, the days are unbelievably quiet, I went to heb yesterday and every parent and child are holding hands, no smiles no laughter just alot of staring off trying to process everything.

Hey, when I was in high school, I spent 0% of the time worrying that someone was going to run into the classroom and shoot me. That shouldn't be a concern for today's kids, either.

Hahaha I loved the Home Alone bit 🤣

Sure, yes…turning schools into prison complexes with armed guards will definitely motivate kids to come to school and be educated.

"Laws are pointless is a bold stance for an attorney general"--I love that!

My heart breaks for those babies that lost their lives 💔 and the teachers🥺😢.

Name the people whom are voting against it as a Senator, name the people whom are in power to be able to change them but not doing anything.

15k - 20k gun homicides with a population of 333 million and 400 million guns. Thats pretty dam good.

Man, as a Texan, I'm really ashamed about our legislature. Almost everyone I know owns a gun. I don't, because I have bouts of extreme depression. To each their own, until someone that would usually punch a wall has a rifle and nothing to live for.

Trump, Abbott, and Ted Cruz will be at an NRA convention this weekend. Someone needs to put 19 child size coffins outside of the convention as protest

Marjorie Taylor Green saying we need to think about mental health is like Colonel Sanders saying you should watch how much Fried Chicken you eat wtf? LOL

I am confused... Can someone explain me why is controversial to have a "gun license" when there is a driving license?

‪Why don’t we ban guns, and when the republicans/kkk/Nazis get upset about it, we will all send them our thoughts and prayers. If “thoughts and prayers” are good enough for people who have lost their children, it should be good enough for those that have lost their guns. ‬

No, "Laws are pointless" is perfectly on brand for an Attorney General with SEVEN pending criminal cases on his butt.

How that "Clench Dance" got by CBS' Broadcast Standards, we'll never know...

"Hallelujah, Dads and Mommies, Cowboys, Rebels, Yanks and Commies Buy yourselves some real red blooded fun. If you want to make the grade, You've got to have a hand grenade, And a fully automatic G.I. Gun. Buy a gun for your son right away, Sir Shake his hand like a man and let him play, Sir. Let his little mind expand, Place a weapon in his hand, For the skills he learns today will someday pay, Sir." .... Tom Paxton, 1965.

i was 12 when Sandy hook happened and now im 21 with the recent shooting. i cried and had panic attacks nonstop; I’m a former early childhood education major and I could not stop thinking of my kids (1st grade and kindergarten) without crying and having panic attacks. Even after Parkland, I cannot stop crying and waking up asking “Am I Next?”. Something needs to get done NOW and by midterm, VOTE VOTE VOTE and get things done..

I'm really baffled that the lawmakers of america are fighting hard and works also extremely fast for the unborn but when the topic of gun control to help reduce case of shootings targeting the LIVING comes up, they find every excuse to do nothing about the situation.

My English teacher was actually named Mr. Smith! 😆

Where do they think they're going to find all of these "retirees" and "ex-military" to "volunteer" to work security at schools? We can barely staff Dunkin' Donuts.

It’s somehow a tragedy at the deepest levels to see elected public officials doing their best at pushing for the worst agenda possibly while lining their pockets from lobbyists

I’m an English teacher and I’ve written raps about Shakespeare’s plays (feeling called out!) - for the record, I think the idea of bringing weapons into a learning environment and expecting teachers to basically be Wild West deputies is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard. I would rather go back to the pandemic model Google Meet teaching 🤷🏾‍♂️

How can someone say that children getting killed is not a political issue??? How can they say this should not be politicized??

Want an assault weapon? Be prepared to pay 10x its price for liability insurance---annually!

I’d be mad as hell if I served for 20+ years and retired, just to have freaking HANNITY of all people conjure up a way to put me back on duty 🤣🤣🤣🤣

“The Child Who is Not Embraced by the Village Will Burn it Down to Feel its Warmth”

Almost a year ago and still happening everyday! 😢 so terrible!

Unless a teacher is experienced with a firearm and is willing to have a mindset to kill every single working hour there is no way he/she will win a gunfight with a determined and deranged shooter. Even experienced police officers make amateur mistakes during the stress of combat, for a teacher to be suddenly able to go from teacher mode to kill mode is highly unlikely to happen, let alone actually hit the assailant when bullets are whizzing by them.

I like how the trained, armed people who are employed specifically to protect schools already show their uselessness, but the solution would be to put more of those on site, but less efficient and not even paid ?

The single most important thing for people to know about this politically is if you vote for more Republicans you are voting for more gun massacres, for more crime.

My first Sargent from my HS JROTC. Had a Vietnam flashback. It was horrible

Do you realize how crazy they sound from abroad saying that there should be armed teachers and police officers at school ? Even for us in the second most armed country in the world (Switzerland), it would never come to mind. It's like, "Yeah, Ithink we need a missile in the basement of our favorite bakery". Just... What ?

Americans now own 400 million registered firearms. That's 1.2 guns for every American on average. The number one cause of child deaths in America is now firearms, it used to be cars. 4,300 children and 45,000 Americans in total died from gunshots in 2020. Is the solution to this problem more guns and less regulation? Maybe there should be less regulations on safe driving so that cars could retake the No.1 spot.

Instead of metal detectors in schools, make every doorway into an industrial grade electromagnet. Walk in with a gun under your trench coat... boom... suddenly you are stuck to the ceiling like Elmer Fudd in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

More guns, more safety? To do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result, I always thought that’s stupidity. Einstein called it insanity.

“Laws are pointless,” in that case why make laws that evict people from housing if they’ve had a medical disaster, or lost their job. Yes, we have many laws that are pointedly harmful. It does not follow that we should therefore not make helpful laws.

Here's a thought... DON'T PAY CONGRESS UNTIL THEY DO THEIR JOB!!!

I am a Jamaican living in Jamaica who loves what America stands for but I need help in understanding something.Age 21 for a pistol and 18 for assault rifles.Wake up and wise up people smh

Since the lawmakers and their families are well-protected and are not in any danger nothing will be done, nothing will change, and the blood bath will continue...

The interesting thing is that there were officers at that school. They were at the school in Santa Fe, Texas during that shooting. One of those officers almost lost his life there trying to protect those kids and 10 people still died there. My kids attend school in a town neighboring Santa Fe. All of our schools have either been rebuilt or refurbished to have two, bullet proof door entry and the office workers are behind another wall of bullet proof glass. They have to buzz you in. All the classes are in pods down long hallways to give them time to go into lockdown if an intruder gets through the first three layers of security and the armed campus police. This is where we’re at. Beto is not pulling a political stunt. He’s actually ticked. We’re emotionally drained here.

"bad guys will try to break the rules anyway, so there's no reason for strict gun laws"... Right, except for when women have to get an abortion as a result of incidents that are no fault of their own, strict anti-abortion bans ensued. Fetuses, not counted by the census, get these guys more worked up, while humans don't

It is ridiculous notion to reduce guns in the USA.... if one gun a second was retrieved... it would only take about 50 years to get them all... let that sink in...

Herschel Walker has been promised anything he wants...wow! Who's a puppet?

I will never understand how I have to prove I am capable of driving a car before I can operate a car legally but any fool can purchase a weapon designed to kill other human beings. The 2nd Amendment says "well regulated." That suggests rules.

I graduated in ‘00 and even THEN we had a retired cop and doors locked. So why the HELL should we be asking teachers to carry. We need SECURITY & GUN REFORM!!!

"you're out of line and an embarrassment" says the guy who let 21 people die.

My sister is a teacher in an inner city elementary/middle school. She works herself to the point of exhaustion every single day to give her kids a good education in a system that fully expects them to fail. She goes above and beyond to make them feel as safe as possible. How can the solution be to give her a gun and tell her to defend herself and those children from deadly attackers? So giving all her time, energy, and skill to the education of the next generation is not enough? Now she must take up arms to defend the school from armed gunman as if in an active war zone? Utterly ridiculous.

To the Attorney General: Following the logic that having a law against guns or murder won't curtail gun violence or murder, well then can we have some consistency and not have an anti-abortion law? I didn't think so.