Kilmer Details STOP School Violence Act During Telephone Town Hall
Representative Derek Kilmer hosted a telephone town hall meeting last week. Residents of the 6th District were updated on events in the other Washington, and allowed to ask questions.
Kilmer started with Florida. “This country has lost too many of its kids to mass shootings that have happened in schools, churches, movie theaters and concerts. I’m just unwilling to accept that this is a fact of life.”
He said that the kids should be the common ground in the debate. “It’s clear to me that all of you want to protect kids, and stop this.”
Kilmer, and other lawmakers, have been working with parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut. “With a bipartisan group of lawmakers we introduced a bill capped students teachers and officers preventing school violence act, or the STOP School Violence act for short.”
The bill would reauthorize the grant program for school security from the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968. Kilmer added, “And it’s a bill that does a bunch of stuff. First it creates some early intervention and prevention programs. Training students, school personnel, and law enforcement to identify signs of violence and to intervene.” Creating intervention programs for students, teachers, and police to identify signs of violence.
The STOP School Violence Act would also develop anonymous reporting systems like mobile apps, hotlines, and websites. But Kilmer said it’s not “That’s one bill that I am working on, I believe that there are other steps that we could take that don’t threaten the rights of law abiding citizens.”
Introduced late last month, House Resolution 4909 was referred to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations last week.
Source: KBKW