Kentucky GOP congressman calls for ending gun-free school zones in response to Uvalde

Comes during a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee on legislation to combat gun violence

Republican Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky has called on Congress to repeal a law that prevents guns from being carried in schools, in response to the recent spate of mass shootings.

Mr Massie made his remarks during a markup in the House Judiciary Committee of numerous pieces of gun legislation that House Democrats have proposed after mass shootings like those in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas and now Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Former president George HW Bush signed the Gun Free School Zones Act in 1990, which imposed criminal penalties to possess and discharge a firearm in a school zone.

“In those states and in those school districts where that’s happened where they’ve allowed qualified teachers and staff, there hasn’t been a single mass shooting at one of those schools,” Mr Massie said. “There hasn’t been a single shooting of one person in one of those schools.”

Mr Massie is one of the most conservative members of Congress. In December, Mr Massie tweeted an image of all of his family holding firearms.

The Republican said that the law would ensure that shooters would know schools are not unarmed.

“The biggest thing we can do here today is repeal the 1990 Gun-Free School Zone Act so that the default condition in this country is not to advertise every student as a target,” he said.

House Democrats held the hearing after the spate of mass shootings that have happened, particularly after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas where Salvador Ramos shot and killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School.