NJEA President Blames Guns After Teacher Left Door Open in Texas School Shooting

TRENTON, NJ – The president of the New Jersey Education Association today is blaming guns for the massacre of at an elemetary school in Uvalde Texas, but it was a teacher not following common sense security protocols that left a door open for the gunman to enter the school.

NJEA’s officers, President Sean M. Spiller, Vice President Steve Beatty, and Secretary-Treasurer Petal Robertson, issued a statement in the wake of today’s tragic school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, calling for stronger measures to protect teachers and students.

The gunman in that shooting began firing at the school from outside, but after seeing a door propped open, left by a teacher who heard the initial vehicle crash outside the school. That open door is what gave the shooter access to the interior of the building.

The NJEA in their statement omitted that fact out of a press release issued this week calling for ‘action’ against gun violence.

“While we do not yet know all the details of today’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, we know that it is a horrible tragedy involving more than a dozen victims. Once again, children and educators are dead and injured, families are devastated, and a community is in shock and mourning. We join Uvalde and America in grief and anger over this senseless violence,” NJEA President Sean Spiller said. ““We also join millions of Americans across this country in calling for strong measures to better protect our children and our communities from this preventable epidemic of gun violence.”

It later turned out, once a full investigation was conducted, lives might have been saved, if not for the open door, left by a teacher.

Additionally, the school resource officer was not at the building. It can be assumed that if the SRO was present, the doors remained closed and the school went into lockdown, according to standard active shooter protocols, lives could have been saved.

“To those who say it is ‘too soon’ to call for action, we say only that it is too late for the victims in Uvalde, but not too late to protect other children across America from similar tragedies in the future. Our children—and all Americans—deserve to be safe in school, at home and wherever else they go. Our nation owes it to them to ensure their safety,” Spiller said.

Spiller should be calling for action today to enforce school security protocols put in place by school security departments, police departments and local school boards. They are in place for this very reason. Instead, Spiller, Governor Phil Murphy and even President Joe Biden are calling for weapons bans against law abiding Americans, while illegal guns run rampant in the streets of New Jersey and America. Those guns would be unaffected by any legislative gun control laws.