Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) took time this past Sunday to give his own response to the recent mass shooting in Uvalde by stating that it was not at all about AR-15 rifles, but more so about the dire need for stronger security throughout schools and the need to better deal with the crisis going on with mental health that has been plaguing the nation.
While speaking on a segment of “Face the Nation,” Hutchinson stated that the AR-15 rifle was invented well before it was utilized for any mass shooting, spotlighting instead the overall need to make schools safer, to find and mark dangerous individuals before they can actually act out any acts of violence, and to better train law enforcement agencies and officers on how to deal with any situations that could arise.
“It certainly shows that you have to have multiple layers of security to protect the children,” stated the governor, making the argument that the safety of the children should not be handled by any singular method. “And there’s also the factor of human error. And that’s the reason that you’ve got to have different layers, you can’t rely upon just one technique.”
“School Safety is something that we all have to focus on coming out of the incredible tragedy that we see in Uvalde, we have to look at how we can better secure our schools. And it is about the single point of entry that by blocking it open allowed the gunman to come in, it is about the mental health issues where we’ve got to do better to identify those that are potentially a mass killer,” he went on in his statements. “You’ve got to have our private sector, internet providers to do better in using technology to identify these kinds of dangerous violent communications much quicker. And then of course, we have to be able to train our officers properly. I know we’re gonna have to learn a lot more facts as to some of the things that happened in Uvalde. Let’s be patient, let’s learn from them. But we can’t give up on our most precious resource in protecting our children.”
Hutchinson then shot down the entire idea that the AR-15 should be controlled in order to try and deal with any future shootings.
“AR-15s were around for 40 years before they were ever used in any type of mass killing or attack,” he expressed. “And so it is about the human heart, it is about identifying the culprits and going after them. And I think it is a discussion you can have. I come down on the point that that’s not going to be the solution. And it’s going to cause more harm than good … I don’t think that’s a solution. And we shouldn’t focus on that.”