'Truly Awful': Sen. Lankford Addresses Shooting At Georgia High School

United States Sen. James Lankford addressed the shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia while visiting the University of Tulsa on Thursday.

Lankford said that he thinks improvements need to be made to school security across the country.

"Truly awful to be able to see another school shooting on this, every single parent, every child, every educator, grieves through the process on this as they're prosecuting now a 14-year-old with obvious mental issues. That was somebody that came out even a year ago and said he was talking about doing a school shooting, so there'll be lots of questions on how that's handled, what was done, what was not done, to be able to protect those parents, those teachers as well, and those students, but we are still a culture that's very dependent on families taking care of families, and a community in a school dealing with that as well," said Lankford.

"So thankful for a school resource officer that was there. Very grateful for lots of folks that serve here in Oklahoma as a school resource officer as well. They were able to step in and protect even more lives from being lost at that point. But it's very important we continue to be able to change the entrances to schools, to be able to make sure somebody from outside doesn't get into a school building is we still have school facilities that are still in that transition. So whatever we can do to help the facility be stronger, help school resource officers, and, quite frankly, help counselors and other folks that are at our school that are doing interdiction before it ever happens that just makes the situation better for us in the future."

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Lankford also said It is important to support school resource officers and counselors so they can reach troubled students before they turn to violence. When asked if there was more that Congress could do to help with school security he said that while Congress already allocates funds for school security he did not think there needed to be a federal regulator trying to manage every school.

"School security is something that Congress has actually allocated funds on. For quite a while, we've allocated funds, even the state of Oklahoma and other states, to be able to help with school security that helps with things like the entrance into the building, what the school needs, as far as response time, warnings, all the doors, all those things to be able to help in school security. So that's a primary issue for the state and each local district to be able to make sure we don't need a federal regulator going to every school in the country, trying to be able to manage every school. But the federal government has allocated resources specifically for school security, and we should continue to be able to engage in this area, but make sure we're also holding local schools and districts and states accountable to be the primary source for that," said Lankford.

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Sen. Lankford was at TU to learn more about emission research. The University of Tulsa hopes to reduce carbon emissions by replacing the carbon in natural gas pipelines with hydrogen. Lankford said this is another example of Oklahoma being a leader in the energy industry. The research being done is a partnership with T-U and Sagebrush, a Tulsa-based pipeline company.