While Rupert Murdoch tweets in favor of gun control, and some Fox Newsies kinda sorta follow suit, Roger Ailes is promoting armed teachers as the answer to school shootings. So this morning, the superintendent of the Harrold, Texas school district told an approving Steve Doocy that having a gun-free school is like asking for the kind of mass shooting that happened in Newtown, Connecticut last week.
Harrold schools superintendant David Thweatt said:
We’ve gone through several passive types of security. We have extended camera systems, we have external locked doors… We did everything passively we could do. What seemed to me to be a problem and (since) whenever we made schools gun-free zones is that we basically left our schools open to attack. This is like putting a sign in front of your house that says, “I really think that it’s a good idea if you come in and attack me because I don’t believe in guns.
…I needed a plan that would protect our kids… Security guards are an idea and that’s fine. But what do you do when that one security guard is at a dentists appointment or has the flu?
Doocy nodded along in agreement and murmured supportive comments like, “Sure.” His only concern seemed to be the fact that the school district does no psychological testing on its gun-toters (because they “know each other fairly well” and “we trust our teachers," according to Thweatt).
Doocy never asked what happens if the gun-toting teacher or teachers are not on hand when a crisis erupts, or if they're supposed to carry a gun with them every moment of the workday? He never showed a concern about how the guns stay accessible without becoming a threat to the children or what kind of training the teachers get. I don’t know about you, but the only thing worse than having my kid shot by a madman would be to have my kid shot mistakenly shot by some inept vigilante.
Instead, Doocy noted sympathetically that another problem for the Harrold school district is that it’s “about 20 miles, 20 minutes away from the sheriff’s department… If something went haywire, and you needed help, you’re on your own for a good piece of time!”
As he spoke a banner on the screen first read, “PACKING FOR PROTECTION” and then, “PREVENTING THE NEXT NEWTOWN.”
In case anyone missed the message, Doocy “asked” if Harrold’s policy would work elsewhere. Thweatt answered, “Whenever you have a situation where you can put multiple people within a school building that are there to potentially protect the kids, that’s a good idea.”
Doocy said, “Right.”
