“Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, a father to one of the Uvalde massacre victims said in response.
Texas schools are sending kids home with DNA kits to help identify children "in case of an emergency."
These kits were required under a Senate bill that was passed in 2021 that requires the Texas Education Agency to distribute inkless, in-home fingerprint and DNA identification kits to all school districts and open-enrollment charter schools "for distribution to the parent or legal custodian of certain students," according to the legislature.
These kits are optional as part of the greater National Child Identification Program through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the program's website.
With the distribution to Texas schools starting this fall, it serves as a grave reminder of the tragedies that have recently taken place in schools.
While the legislature refers to the use of the kits to help locate missing and trafficked children, some Texas parents have noted additional possible subtext behind the kits.
In the wake of the recent mass shooting that occurred at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, many parents had to submit DNA to help officials identify deceased children due to the damage the weapon used in the massacre did to their remains, according to NBC News.
Brett Cross, a father to one of the Uvalde massacre victims, took to Twitter to share his frustrations with lawmakers for not addressing the issues head-on.
“Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered. It’s like wiping your ass before you take a shit,” Cross wrote in a tweet.
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is choosing to send DNA kits to schools that parents can use to identify their children’s bodies AFTER they’ve been murdered rather than pass gun safety laws to proactively protect their lives,” said Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, in a tweet.
While the legislature doesn't state that the kits are meant to help identify students after a shooting, but rather would be used in the event of an “emergency,” Texas lawmakers said the bill was initiated after a school shooting that occurred in 2018, according to the Dallas Morning News.
