[music]

Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, again, everyone. Just a program note as we start the second half of the show, roughly half. You may have heard our messaging pointing to the one-day pledge drive that was originally scheduled for today. Obviously, nobody wants to do that today under the circumstances of the Texas shooting, so we postpone that fundraiser for now. We'll do it at some point. Obviously, that would have been inappropriate and nobody wanted to do it anyway, so just for those of you who may have been expecting to hear a pledge drive format today, just for this day, we have postponed that.

Now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was part of the political debate on guns on Fox News Channel last night. He opposed new gun laws, not surprisingly, and he emphasized making schools more secure and more prepared as his main policy proposals to prevent school shootings in the future. We're going to talk about that now. We're going to talk about best practices for keeping schools safe.

Even with the best and strongest gun control measures, which we were focusing on in our last segment, school security still needs to be effective and students and teachers still need to be prepared. We'll bring on a guest on this in a minute. Here, for some context, is Attorney General Paxton on TV last night.

Ken Paxton: We can't stop bad people from doing bad things. They're going to violate murder laws. They're not going to follow gun laws. I've never understood that argument. We can harden these schools. We can create points of access that are difficult to get through. We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly because reality is we don't have the resources to have law enforcement at every school. It takes time for law enforcement no matter how prepared, no matter how good they are to get there, so having the right training for some of these people at the school is the best hope. Nothing's going to work perfectly, but that, in my opinion, is the best answer to this problem.

Brian Lehrer: Attorney General of Texas, Republican Ken Paxton on Fox News Channel last night. We'll point out again in response to the first part of that, that it's not just about breaking gun laws to get guns. So many guns used in mass shootings are obtained legally. If guns were so generally legal, they wouldn't be there on the black market to sell illegally uniquely among any other country in the world with some of the stats we were pointing out before, 120 guns per 100 people in the United States. More guns per people.

Not even close in any other country. 55 per 100 people is the next closest, so less than half. That's Yemen, which is a country in a civil war. US is the only country in the world in its category. As I said before the clip, we're going to talk about best practices now for keeping schools safe in addition to talking about gun laws. Even with the best and strongest gun control measures, school security still needs to be effective and students and teachers still need to be prepared, especially with so many guns already out there in this country.

With us for this is Tony Montalto whose daughter, Gina, was one of the victims of the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just over four years ago. Tony Montalto is president of the group Stand With Parkland. His group's message to people in power has been consistent, support pragmatic policy changes and law changes that are going to help make us all safer as he told an NBC News affiliate in West Palm Beach last night.

Tony, welcome to WNYC. First, I just want to say how sorry I am that you're here in these circumstances yet again because you may not be in new grief, but I'm sure this just triggers everything for you once again, so thank you for your courage and putting yourself out there to come on shows like this.

Tony Montalto: Well, thanks for having me on and yes, sadly, news of the school shooting yesterday brought our family right back to where we were on February 14 of 2018 when we learned about the loss of our forever 14-year-old daughter Gina. It's very difficult. Our hearts break for the families in Texas because we know the pain they're going through as they went through the reunification process and then some of them found out the news that no parent wants to hear. It's very difficult.

Brian Lehrer: On a personal level, is there anything you can even say to the victims' families and friends? We did a personal segment early in the show before we got to politics because we thought that should come first. What can somebody who's been through this like you even say to those victims' families and friends?

Tony Montalto: All we can say is try and breathe. Try to lean on your family, lean on your friends and it's a pain that doesn't go away. The best you can hope for is to find a way to work around it each day, but at this stage, quite frankly, early on, there wasn't much anybody could say because I was literally trying to get through minute to minute, let alone day to day. Then the shock is unbelievable. The pain, of course, sadly lingers.

Brian Lehrer: You've spoken about something you call the triad of school safety laws. You want to lay that out for us briefly?

Tony Montalto: Sure. It's not necessarily laws. Stand With Parkland, the National Association of Families for Safe Schools was founded by families who had a loved one murdered in Parkland, the high school shooting in 2018. We came together to change the status quo because we realized it wasn't working. The way we look at things is we try and be uniquely inclusive. We're nonpartisan. We look at school safety in a holistic manner with the aforementioned triad of school safety.

That involves securing each campus, improving mental health screening and support programs, and finally, if you choose to own one, we demand that you're responsible with a firearm, responsible firearms ownership. All three of these things let our families down. I'm afraid that we're going to find, yet again, here in Texas that all three of those things failed those families.

Brian Lehrer: What's the responsible gun ownership part of that? What does that entail as you see it?

Tony Montalto: Well, we are not going to let this devolve. What we've tried not to do is let it devolve into a Second Amendment debate. That accomplishes nothing. We've seen that after too many shootings. We'd like to talk about some responsibility. Let's talk about being subject to a background check when you purchase the weapon. Let's talk about storing any firearm you have in your home safely. By that, we mean where it's not accessible by children and where it's not likely to be stolen.

Another part of our platform there is red flag or extreme risk protection laws. For those of you that aren't familiar, these laws have required that when somebody is deemed a threat to themselves or others, after a due process court hearing, their weapons are removed from them so they have the opportunity to get help. That's one of the most proactive means of stopping these shootings.

All too often after the shootings, we hear from neighbors or friends or those in the area that, "Oh yes, we knew this person was trouble or that person was trouble or they were having difficulties." These red flag laws allow firearms to remain in the hands of responsible owners and to be removed from those who are a threat to the rest of us.

Brian Lehrer: On the red flag laws, you may know this is a topic of conversation in New York now, where I am, after the Buffalo shooting the other week. In that case, another 18-year-old shooter who apparently did not have New York's Red Flag Law triggered, preventing him from buying a weapon legally, even an assault weapon, even at age 18, but even though he had been identified as someone who was having mental health problems, including suicidal thoughts earlier. Is there an issue? Is there a bigger issue with application of red flag laws than there is with the creation and passing of them?

Tony Montalto: Well, you can't enforce them if you don't have them. Right now, only 20 states and the District of Columbia have red flag laws. We need more of them. Right now in Congress, there's a bill that was put forth by Senator Scott, Senator Rubio from Florida. Also has support from Senator King and Senator Reid. It's a bipartisan bill, S.292, that would provide federal dollars to states that have or pass red flag laws.

That's a reasonable measure that both Republicans and Democrats should be able to get behind and move forward on this. Once the laws are in place, yes, it is incumbent upon the public and law enforcement to find a way to locate these people and identify the ones that are having trouble and get them the help they need before they resort to violence. We're pretty much a school safety organization. I'm speaking to these laws in reference to how they could protect mostly our children, our teachers at schools, but of course, something like that would go elsewhere and help protect us.

Brian Lehrer: Let's talk about the schools themselves. I played that clip of the Texas Attorney General at the top and that's what he wants to emphasize, rather than gun laws. I imagine that you running this organization that seeks to be nonpartisan and bipartisan, and avoid the useless debates on proposals that don't go anywhere, also want to focus on hardening the targets, if that's the right phrase to use, or preparing the people at the schools, maybe doing what he was also talking about in that interview that I saw, which is trying to maximize the number of schools that have armed guards at the entrances, or that only have one access point to each school. Are things like that on your list?

Tony Montalto: Of course, this is a multi-layered problem. There's no magic wand to wave to fix this. It's a bunch of little pragmatic steps that we need to do. Here in Florida, we passed school safety laws for the last five sessions. Building a bridge, stepping stone process to increase the safety of our students and our teachers. We've also worked in other states to help them promote this.

Yes, we do have to provide a single point of entry. We need access control to our schools, just the same way we do to our federal buildings, our airports, and any other place that we deem of value. We need to help protect our students and our teachers. By the same token, we can't build prisons, we can't build fortresses. They need to be places of learning.

There's really a lot of in-between processes and things that we can do to help our schools not the least of which are making sure that schools have drills to prepare the students and the teachers so they know what to do should the worst happen.

Brian Lehrer: Wasn't it the case at Marjory Stoneman Douglas that there was an armed security guard on duty who was aware that there was a shooter in the school but did not go in with his gun?

Tony Montalto: There were, sadly, a multitude of failures in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas case. Many of which can be found at our website of standwithparkland.org. On our resources page, we have links to various things and one of them is the report from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission, which has recommendations of low cost, no-cost items, up to expensive items of things that can be done to help secure your schools. Sadly, Officer Peterson did not do his job. He did not stop the threat. He did not save the children that were under attack. That does not mean that they are not effective.

There are many cases and many stories of school resource officers and others being proactive and stopping school shootings. We've worked with the US Secret Service and the National Threat Assessment Center. In their 2019 report on protecting America schools, they found that zero, none of the instances they covered in that study were stopped by someone from off-campus. We believe that having an armed individual on campus is vital. Not only to build rapport and to have a mentorship and guidance but to be that last line of defense should the worst thing happen to the teachers and schools on that campus.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think then about the proposal that mostly Republicans support to allow teachers to get trained to carry guns with them into the schools if they choose to? We had a teacher call in in an earlier segment today who said she thought that was an insane idea because, for one thing, for safety, the teachers would probably be required to put those guns under lock and key, so then if there was an active shooter situation, it would be too late by the time they retrieve their gun anyway to do anything about it, and also that it would create more risk, in that teacher's opinion, if there were more guns in the school because you don't know who's going to go off. Is it a teacher, or is it a student who gets the teacher's gun away from the teacher or whatever? What's your group's position on that?

Tony Montalto: There are many issues, should teachers be armed and that's one of the reasons that Stand With Parklands position is against arming teachers. We believe that teachers should be there to teach our children, not to be security guards. We do believe, however, that armed individuals on campus dedicated to security are vital to keeping our students and our teachers safe.

Brian Lehrer: Pelle in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Pelle: Hi, thanks for taking my call. I really also appreciate hearing about all the work that this guest is doing. I wanted to bring up something about the schools practicing sheltering in place and lockdown drills. I have two elementary-age children in public school and my nine-year-old, his recurring nightmare is about gunmen coming in and chasing him. I tried to think, oh, it's just a coincidence for a long time, but I do think that the fact that he knows that he has to practice hiding in case a shooter comes into his school, I can't imagine having to do that.

He told me he really worries about one of his classmates because he's not satisfied that his friend's hiding place is really good enough, that he thinks the shooter would be able to get this friend. When I think about Congress, and how they were so terrified on January 6th when this insurrection happened, and I feel like, "Well, why not just make them do lockdowns every time they have a session so that they can remember what it was like when they feared for their lives and for them to think about little children that have to think about this on a regular basis?" I just think it's insane. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Do you think the drills at your child's school are inappropriate? Would you rather there be less of them, or what's your reaction to how they're done since your child has these fears?

Pelle: I think that, unfortunately, they're necessary because there are shootings, and so I think it's important that they know what to do. I would much rather that we had stronger gun laws. I don't think it's necessary for people to be running around with firearms. I wish that there were federal laws regulating things so that people can't go from state to state with guns.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, as easily as they can. Pelle, thank you very much for your call. That's so distressing and we have at least one other caller on the line or on our board who we're not going to be able to get to on the air, Tony, but telling a similar story of a child who has fears with the drills that go on in their school. I wonder if you at Stand With Parkland have developed or endorsed any best practices for active shooter drills that are both significantly meaningfully preparing children and teachers but also not freaking them out unnecessarily and causing psychological harm?

Tony Montalto: Well, we do agree that drills need to be done. We also know that they need to be age-appropriate and try and not traumatize the children that are involved. However, I can tell you that we had students who died because they were just outside the delineated safe zone. There wasn't enough practice. Even when there is practice, the teacher in my daughter's classroom put her outside in the hall. She knew that that was not the procedure but Gina was a hard worker and she wanted to get some work done in study hall and it was too noisy in the classroom. She was on the wrong side of the locked door, and I could tell you, I'd give anything to be able to talk Gina through the nightmares had she been on the correct side of that locked door?

Brian Lehrer: I hear you. Jose in Suffolk County, you're on WNYC. Hello, Jose.

Jose: Oh, thank you for the opportunity. My heart goes out to those who died and to the families that are grieving right now. No one could ever imagine that happening to them in their lifetime. Us as parents are the ones who should be dying first before our children and so my heart goes out to them.

I wanted to make a point because it always gets to that one thing, politics. One of them is the person who had perpetrated that act was obviously not white, and that was never mentioned about that issue me being a Hispanic person. They don't want to make that aspect political.

Moving on, I just want to say that there are ways to protect people just like the gentleman that you have on right now is hardening the schools. Here in Suffolk County, we have the schools that do not have door handles. You have to buzz in, you're greeted by the person at the point of entry one way in, one way out. Those are things they're talking about. I disagree with the gentleman regarding teachers having firearms and the preposterous idea that they would have it locked up in a room, in a key, in a lock.

Because a properly trained person with a firearm is a good barrier between the one shooting and the children and that person would have security. These guns are so high-tech these days that they can be secure on a person's body and virtually impossible to remove from that person with the proper gear like Black Hawk or some type of gear like that.

Brian Lehrer: You wouldn't be worried about, especially in a high school, students, the worst among them, for whatever reason, trying to get the gun away from the teacher if it wasn't locked up?

Jose: Do police officers have that concern and worry? Absolutely. Do police officers have the proper gear that prevent someone from getting the weapon? We are talking about a scenario where the teacher will have the social skills to talk down a person like a kid to do that. My other point is, my last point, not to be so winded, is that you had the issue in Nice in 2016. I did the research before I got on here. 2016, 87 people died, 458 people injured. That was a horrific, horrific thing. Vehicular murder is more of an issue these days with alcohol use and everything than in drug use right now.

Brian Lehrer: Jose, let me jump in, and for time, forgive me, but why not go for an all of the above strategy? People, obviously, a lot of our listeners, will disagree with a lot of the things you're bringing up. We don't have to go point by point, but if your goal is maximum security, why not also restrict the availability of guns and not talk about what seems like an extraneous thing, which is people who own cars, which are for driving, driving into crowds though, of course, that has happened?

Jose: Maximum security, I don't advocate because, like you said, maximum security only equates to the extreme, and we don't want to go the extremes preventing law-abiding citizens by having arms. You're never going to prevent some type of psychosis that happens later in the future with that person whether it be Alzheimer's, whether it be some major depression, or just somebody who snaps. You'll never, never, never prevent that from happening.

What you can do is provide some of those like the package deal like the gentleman said. Have a package deal where there is comprehensive common-sense laws, not but to say that their universal background check. I don't even know what that means. When I, as a person from New York State was in Virginia as a military personnel, went to Virginia and had to go through a background check just to get a weapon even though I went through all the training as a military personnel.

Brian Lehrer: I think, Jose, I'm going to leave it there and I'm going to give you a last word in this segment, Tony Montalto. It's an example of the polarization. He wants all these things that people on the left don't want but is resistant to something like background checks which is not going to completely change the game but it's another piece of reducing the risk. I think that's where you're going with your group, is trying to look at multifaceted ways and don't just run to a political corner but do a lot of both end. I don't know. I'm just curious, how do you react when you hear these polarized calls?

Tony Montalto: I react with saying we need to just focus on what we can do, the art of the possible, things that are in the middle. One of those things is to get Congress to pass the Eagles Act. The Eagles Act is a bipartisan bill in both the Senate and the House. It's named after the mascot at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. What this bill would do would be to increase funding to the US Secret Service and their National Threat Assessment Center to have more research into preventing school shootings.

Once they complete their research, then they go out to the states, to the school districts, to our local communities, and they teach people, in those communities, how to identify children that are exhibiting concerning behaviors. Then the object is not to incarcerate, not to stigmatize them but to get them the help that they need long before they resort to violence. Proactive tools such as behavioral threat assessment, and, sadly, what failed up in New York is the management piece of that. Once you identify somebody, you keep an eye on them to make sure that they're continuing to get the help they need.

This is vital and, again, this is a bipartisan bill in both Houses of Congress and we need action by Congress. Just to touch on red flag laws real quick. Both President Trump and President Biden have supported those. It's not the political leaders of the parties, it is the leaders and our elected officials in Congress who refuse to act. That's why we need practical people, people in the middle, people who want to see our students and our teachers protected to vote to get people to do that and to contact their congressmen.

They can do that by going to standwithparkland.org, putting your information in, and when we see a bill that's coming down the pike that's important, we will send you an email. You read what we're writing, you fill out your information, and automatically populates to your elected representatives. You have to let them know how you feel.

We think that both Democrats and Republicans want their children and our teachers to be protected in school. Let's find a way to come together as an American family and make that happen rather than looking at the political agendas of the left and the right.

Brian Lehrer: Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was one of the victims of the shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida just over four years ago. He's president of the group Stand With Parkland. Thank you so much for your time today.

Tony Montalto: Thank you. Have a nice day.

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.