Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, speaking the day after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, told Newsmax that he did not think calls to curtail gun ownership "would have stopped any of this."
"They have a political agenda of limiting guns in the hands of everybody, which makes no sense," Paxton, R-Texas, told "National Report" on Wednesday in response to comments from President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama calling for renewed gun control efforts.
"What I would say is the state of Texas has guardian laws. They have martial laws, which empower school districts to make choices about whether they want to train people in their own schools to be ready."
Police can't be everywhere at all times, Paxton said, but still, "there's nothing wrong, in my opinion, with starting to think about putting trained police officers, maybe just a few in every school."
But that would cost more than training school employees to handle a shooter, he added. "We have laws in place that if school districts would take advantage of them, I think they could make a major difference," he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Paxton told Fox News that when he was a member of the Texas Legislature, a program was funded to allow local school districts to decide if they wanted to train teachers or other school personnel to defend themselves.
Paxton said he is on his way to Uvalde to meet up with his team on the ground.
"We deal with the victims of crime," he said. "We try to get there as quickly as we can to help them and whatever way we can, whether that's psychologically [or] emotionally, or with medical issues. We're going to be there to try to help these people and give them the support that they need."
Paxton said it will be difficult to determine why the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, also of Uvalde, would have barricaded himself inside a classroom inside the school and opened fire, as police shot and killed him.
"I do think we need to focus on what we can do to prevent this," he said. "We've already had too many of these, and there are resources I think available right now that could have made a difference in this particular situation."
Paxton added that he's been contacted by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and the state's former attorney general, Pam Bondi, who reached out to him to talk about their state's similar situation in the aftermath of the Parkland shootings in 2018, where 17 high school students were killed.
"I'm going to be relying on their experience, given that they've gone through this as well," he said. "It's a difficult time."
He added that he had not yet spoken with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, as "we were dealing with our issues related to the crime victims. That was our first focus. I'm headed out there in just a few hours and we obviously also we're dealing with the election last night, so we have a lot going on."
Paxton, who was backed by former President Donald Trump in his reelection bid, won the GOP nomination in a runoff race over Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush Tuesday.
He said if he's reelected this fall, the work will continue the numerous lawsuits he's filed against the Biden administration.
"We're in a battle for our freedom and whether this Constitution is going to stand," he said. "That includes the First Amendment, includes the Second Amendment that we're dealing with today, and Texas is going to have to lead that fight."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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