A candlelight vigil for Emilio Hoffman, the victim of a shooting at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Ore., on June 10, 2014. Authorities said a teen gunman armed with a rifle shot and killed the 14-year-old student and injured a teacher.
President Donald Trump vowed to eliminate gun-free zones on schools and military bases on his first day in office.
More than three months in, we haven't seen any movement on this promise from the executive branch.
When a reporter asked about it on Feb. 1, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump had been "very active in terms of getting executive orders out."
"We're going to continue to move through this process, and I think we'll have further updates on where we are with respect to the rest of the EO process," he said.
There has been some interest on the congressional level.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced a bill, the Safe Students Act, in the House to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990, on Jan. 3.
On Jan. 12, the House referred the bill to the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, and there's been no further developments on the bill since then.
Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C., also introduced a bill, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, that would allow gun owners to conceal and carry weapons in any public spaces that allow guns, regardless of their state residency.
A provision of that bill could undo part of the current law that creates gun-free zones in schools because it would exempt concealed carry permit holders from that law, according to The Trace.
The guns in schools issue also came up during Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' confirmation hearing. She suggested that an elementary school in rural Wyoming might need guns to protect students from external threats, like grizzly bears, so the decision to have firearms should be left up to local lawmakers. Wyoming has a policy banning weapons in elementary, middle and high school.
As we reported, eliminating gun-free zones in these areas represents a challenging endeavor, due in part to the confluence of federal and state laws that protect these areas.
