- In Insider's June cover story, Tan France said he's building a schoolroom in his new home for his kids and their friends.
- The decision to homeschool came to France and his husband after "shocking" mass shootings in the US.
- "How do we keep our children safe?" France said he and his husband ask each other.
"Queer Eye" host Tan France told Insider's JP Mangalindan in our June cover story that he's building a schoolroom in his new home so that he can homeschool children because of the "shocking" school shootings that happen in the US.
"I don't know if it's happened in my lifetime, a school shooting in England, so for me, it's completely shocking," the South Yorkshire, England native said.
While France has lived in the US for almost 15 years, he said he's "still shocked that this has been allowed to keep happening." It left him and his husband Rob asking one another, "How do we keep our children safe?"
France and his husband Rob have been married since 2007 and share a son named Ismail, who was born in July 2021. He said the schoolroom they want to build in their Salt Lake City home is for a community school that would also include children of family friends.
The Netflix host's comments regarding school safety come in the wake of the May mass shooting that occurred in Uvalde, Texas. An 18-year-old gunman opened fire on students and teachers at Robb Elementary School, killing 19 children and two teachers. It was the deadliest school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre 10 years ago.
In response to the Uvalde mass shooting as well as other recent mass shootings in a Buffalo, New York, supermarket in May and on a hospital campus in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in June, the Senate passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act by a wide bipartisan margin on Thursday and the House of Representatives passed the bill on Friday.
The bill, which would enact the toughest new gun restrictions since the 1990s, will next go to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.
Insider's Bryan Metzger and Lauren Frias previously reported that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the full text of which can be found here, includes multimillion-dollar investments in mental health services and school security, as well as a new federal ban on gun trafficking.
It would also offer new funding supporting states and tribes that seek to enact "red flag" laws — which allow authorities to confiscate guns from individuals deemed a threat to themselves or others — closing the so-called "boyfriend loophole," and subjecting gun purchasers under the age of 21 to new background check requirements.
Click here to read France's full cover story written by JP Mangalindan, featuring exclusive photos by Martin Schoeller.