Education

Cooper says he’s ‘tired of seeing texts’ from students telling parents they’re afraid of school shootings. ‘We cannot normalize this.’

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) said in an interview Sunday that he is “tired of seeing texts from children in a school telling their parents that they’re afraid and that they love them” following a shooting at a high school in Georgia this week.

“I’m tired of seeing texts from children in a school telling their parents that they’re afraid and that they love them,” the North Carolina governor said in an interview with CBS’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation.” “We cannot normalize this.”

Two students and two teachers were killed in the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) official said in a press briefing Wednesday. Vice President Harris addressed the shooting Wednesday, calling it a “senseless tragedy” at a rally in New Hampshire.

“But our kids are sitting in a classroom, where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, and some part of their brain is worried about a shooter busting through the classroom. It does not have to be this way,” the vice president said.

Cooper, in his CBS appearance, said he believes “we have to do everything we can to reduce gun violence, particularly gun violence in our schools.”


President Biden also said in a prior statement that he was “mourning the deaths of those whose lives were cut short due to more senseless gun violence.”

“What should have been a joyous back-to-school season in Winder, Georgia, has now turned into another horrific reminder of how gun violence continues to tear our communities apart. Students across the country are learning how to duck and cover instead of how to read and write. We cannot continue to accept this as normal,” the president said.