Texas Ranger, child advocates react to Abbott's school safety plan

HOUSTON (FOX 26) - Armed school marshals, additional law enforcement, more training, better alarms, anonymous campus tip lines -- all good ideas from the governor, but for a former Texas Ranger turned security expert, Greg Abbott's plan to better protect kids is woefully incomplete.

"One of the things that we need to quit ignoring is that everybody has the right to buy and carry and have every single type of weapon they want to carry, any type of firearm. I don't think that we, the people, have agreed to that," said Tony Leal of PPI Security

Leal, whose own Ranger son ran the crime scene at Sutherland Springs, has seen up-close-and-far-too-personal the human wreckage left by firearms in the wrong hands. He believes any school safety plan unaccompanied by "common sense" limits on gun access invites avoidable future carnage.

"I can't think of any situation where a person needs to walk in, buy a weapon and walk out in the same amount of time that it takes to walk into Domino's and get a pizza," said Leal.

Meantime, those whose expressed mission is the well-being of students welcomed the governor's words, but worry his recommendations won't be backed by the major public funding required to implement lasting campus safeguards across the state.

 "We know that if we are going to live in a gun culture and a place that values the Second Amendment as much as Texas does, I think the question for us is, are we doing everything in our power to prevent the next school shooting?" said Andy Canales of the advocacy organization Children at Risk.