TX Schools to Offer DNA Kits to Help Identify Kids in Mass Shootings

Public faculty districts in Texas will quickly begin providing DNA and fingerprint kits to households of scholars as a part of a legislation to assist determine kids in case of an “emergency,” in response to a brand new report from the Houston Chronicle. And whereas the legislation by no means explicitly says it’s for figuring out children whose our bodies could also be torn to shreds by a college shooter with a high-powered rifle, that’s all any father or mother can take into consideration, since that’s what occurred in Uvalde earlier this 12 months.

The DNA and fingerprint kits, which can be found for youths from kindergarten to eighth grade in Texas, may be saved at dwelling or given to the varsity or native police division, relying on the needs of oldsters and guardians. The new program is a part of a Texas legislation handed in 2021 that makes clear the DNA samples and fingerprints are voluntary. And it’s billed as one thing that may be saved on file simply in case kids should be recognized by strangers.

“Participation in the program is completely voluntary and allows parents to take, store and control their child’s fingerprints and DNA in their own home in the event that is ever needed,” a spokesperson for the Canutillo faculty district advised an area CBS affiliate.

Some mother and father in Texas are understandably upset about your complete thought of taking their child’s DNA, noting that it does nothing to stop faculty shootings.

“DNA or fingerprints will not make my kid safer,” one father or mother from the Houston Independent School District advised the Houston Chronicle.”It will assist with identification afterwards.”

In Uvalde, the place 19 kids and two lecturers have been murdered whereas police waited outdoors, lots of the children had their our bodies so destroyed by the killer’s bullets that folks have been requested to submit DNA samples to assist determine their children. In truth, at the very least two of the youngsters murdered at Uvalde have been described as “decapitated” by the gunman’s AR-15, in response to Dr. Roy Guerrero, a pediatrician who was working at Uvalde Memorial Hospital as kids have been introduced in.

“I had heard from some of the nurses that there were two dead children who had been moved to the surgical area of the hospital. What I did find was something no prayer will ever relieve,” Dr. Guerrero testified to a congressional listening to the following month.

“Two children, whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart, that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them. Clinging for life and finding none,” Guerrero stated.

Minor gun reforms have been handed within the wake of Uvalde, although they failed to handle any of the most important proposals by Democrats, together with the need to lift the age to buy a gun, a proposal to ban assault weapons because the nation had completed within the Nineties, and to increase common background checks.

The U.S. nonetheless has among the most relaxed gun legal guidelines amongst all rich nations. And the onus remains to be on faculties to “harden” as if they’re navy installations, and pursue new ways just like the DNA kits to arrange for the worst.

While the brand new Texas law states that no baby’s fingerprints may be, “used as evidence in any criminal proceeding in which the child is a defendant,” it doesn’t say something related concerning the DNA pattern. The legislation additionally says that faculties ought to undertake guidelines for the destruction of fingerprints and images of scholars used for identification functions, however by no means outlines what these guidelines ought to be, not to mention point out how these information ought to be maintained to make sure privateness. And, once more, it doesn’t say something about adopting guidelines to destroy DNA samples.