Kansas lawmakers call for gun control, school safety after Olathe East High School shooting
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Olathe East High School shooting
A shooting at a Johnson County high school injured a school resource officer and an administrator, according to police. The suspect, a student, is in custody.
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Kansas state Sen. Cindy Holscher is no stranger to debates over gun rights and firearm safety.
The Overland Park Democrat has unsuccessfully pushed to ban concealed weapons from the Capitol and make unsafe gun storage a crime. As recently as Wednesday, a Senate committee held a hearing on a bill she is sponsoring that would require police to confiscate guns from people convicted of domestic battery.
But on Friday, Holscher was shaken. A shooting at Olathe East High School, her son’s school, had left three people injured.
“I’ll never be the same after this,” Holscher said. “You see the reports. You hear the things that go on in other places, but until you’re there standing on that sidewalk looking at that school waiting to hear from your child, I mean, it’s the worst feeling ever.”
The shooting at Olathe East on Friday lent fresh urgency to the push for stricter gun laws in Kansas — a cause that has experienced repeated defeats in recent years as the Legislature has loosened restrictions on firearms.
For more than a decade, Kansas has been making it easier to have guns and shrinking the areas that are off-limits to deadly weapons. Residents as young as 18 can have concealed weapons and those 21 and up can have them without a license.
At the same time, efforts to enact additional restrictions have faltered. Multiple efforts to pass a “red flag” law, which would allow courts to temporarily take away guns from people who may be a danger to themselves or others, have fallen flat.
“You know, we’ve been trying to make changes. I’m not talking about radical changes … I’m just talking about simple things to help people be a little bit safer,” Holscher said.
Lawmakers are currently weighing legislation that would prohibit state agencies from contracting with private companies that discriminate against the firearms industry. Another proposal would direct the State Board of Education to develop a firearm safety training program based on the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program.
“We can’t let this happen again. The Legislature has, over the past decade, continued to weaken our gun laws, and we know that states with the weakest gun laws have the highest rates of violent crime,” Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, a Lenexa Democrat, said.
“If anyone wants to say this is too soon to talk about gun laws after this happened then we need to pull the Eddie Eagle bill off the agenda for Monday.”
Hoye said the bill could open a loophole allowing guns to be brought into schools by instructors of the program.
Details of the shooting were still emerging Friday, but the location — a high school — shook Johnson County and Kansas. A school administrator and a resource officer were injured. The suspect, a student, was also injured.
While school shootings have become grimly familiar, Kansas itself has experienced relatively few incidents. In 2019, a shooting outside an Overland Park middle school left two teenagers injured. It occurred around 9 p.m. on a Saturday night. In September, three Wichita high school students were injured in a lunch time shooting outside a school.
Whether Friday’s shooting would alter the Legislature’s overall posture on guns was uncertain. Some lawmakers and leaders opted to stay out of the debate on Friday.
Gov. Laura Kelly said she was “closely monitoring” the situation. “Our thoughts are with the entire Olathe East High School community today,” Kelly said on Twitter.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, and House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, a Wichita Democrat, both issued statements that didn’t mention gun legislation. “Students, teachers, staff, and others deserve to feel safe in their school,” Sawyer said. Sykes, however, is the lead sponsor on the bill to require law enforcement to confiscate weapons from domestic abusers.
Any effort to change current law will ultimately depend on Republican support. GOP lawmakers on Friday said the Legislature had provided significant funding for school safety in recent years.
Rep. Megan Lynn, an Olathe Republican whose district includes Olathe East High School, said the focus should be on students, families and teachers rather than politics. The shooting reinforces the need to continue to invest in school safety.
“What occured this morning is heartbreaking as a mother to children in the Olathe School District as as a friend to many students and teachers at Olathe East. I appreciate the heroism of the school resource officer who acted selflessly under difficult circumstances to protect our students,” Lynn said.
House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, said prayers were with the students, teachers and families of the high school. He also praised the school resource officer “who risked their life to protect our children from harm today.”
“The House has repeatedly allocated funds for School Safety and Security. Our students and the people who dedicate their lives to our children’s education should be safe in our schools all day, every day,” Ryckman said in a statement.
In 2018 the Legislature approved $5 million in grants for school safety and security measures. Last year Gov. Laura Kelly did not recommend continuation of the grants in her budget. The Legislature directed the State Department of Education to use federal COVID-19 relief dollars on the program. The department later determined that was not an allowable use of federal dollars.
Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican, on Twitter voiced support for school resource officers at every school.
Sen. Rob Olson, an Olathe Republican whose district includes Olathe East High School, was unaware of the shooting when a reporter reached him by phone about an hour after the incident became public. Having just learned about the shooting, Olson said it would be premature for him to comment.
“We ought to let it evolve before we start talking about it,” Olson said.
Rep. Linda Featherston, an Overland Park Democrat, said anyone who says discussion about gun policy needs to wait should think about the parents and students of Olathe East students.
“If we’re not going to stand up for those kids now, when are we going to stand up for them?” Featherston said.
Hoye, a longtime advocate of gun control, said a school shooting in Kansas proved it was past time for action.
“I hope that we live in a place where when our principals and teachers and law enforcement are put in danger like this that we will be compelled to act,” Hoye said.
“I don’t want to live in a country where we’re just relieved that the school resource officer was there to shoot the student.”
Earlier versions of this article incorrectly reported that the legislature removed $5 million in grants for school safety and security from the budget last year. Gov. Kelly did not recommend continuation of the grant funding in her proposed budget.
This story was originally published March 4, 2022 at 3:08 PM.
