Although Fox News pundits will almost surely attack anyone who calls for stricter gun control after today’s deadly school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas as "exploiting tragedy," the network has already ramped up its own “more guns!” propaganda.
On the Happening Now show, host Jon Scott interviewed Steve Rogers, identified as a “former member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, a retired Navy lieutenant commander as well.” NewsHounds readers know Rogers as a reliable voice of inflammatory, anti-Democratic rhetoric.
Surely, if Barack Obama was still president, Rogers would have blamed him for today’s tragedy in Texas. But since it’s Trump in the White House, it was the Trump-friendly message promoting guns.
ROGERS: What’s going to be happening nationwide is every school district is now going to have to reassess the layers of protection that are needed. They’re going to have to be more proactive. …. Certainly, metal detectors are something that every school district is gonna probably have to consider as well as placing armed personnel in schools. There’s a lot of controversy around that particular subject and the time has come to put armed police officers in schools.
As the video shows, Rogers appeared on the show at six minutes after the hour. About 20 minutes later, after we learned that there had been an armed resource officer in the school, who was also shot, Fox hosted “Former CIA analyst and former NYPD Intelligence Division” Buck Sexton. He is also a regular guest on Fox. On May 8, we saw him comparing former Secretary of State John Kerry to the Taliban. So it’s no surprise Sexton was back again soon!
This time, Sexton’s obvious mission was to spin the tragedy for conservatives, i.e. call for even more guns and not waste a second of Trump TV air-time allowing viewers to consider that maybe guns are not the answer.
“There is no perfect solution, there is no panacea,” Sexton said, as a precursor to defending the utility of an armed guard. “In this case, even an armed resource officer wasn’t enough necessarily to prevent it but might have stopped further casualties.”
Host Julie Banderas said she’s “sick and tired” of all the questions yet the problem “seems to be getting worse,” not better. She noted that an armed guard “can’t be in every classroom at every minute of the day.” With more than 1,400 students at the school, “one person with a gun can’t possibly defend that many kids,” she added.
That was a neat set up for Sexton to call for more guns.
SEXTON: Well, this is where I think the conversation about people on campus who are trained personnel, adults who have concealed carry permits also comes into play. … It could be teachers, it could be maintenance personnel, it could be athletic coaches, anyone who has the proper training and skill set. Because one of the problems you have is if there’s one armed resource officer and everyone knows that person … if you have a bad actor, if you have a would-be shooter, he knows either to avoid that one person or perhaps – and this may have happened in that case – to target that one person. Concealed carry makes that a more difficult calculation from the perspective of the shooter.
BANDERAS: Good point.
Sexton did say he didn’t think that was the only solution. But banning assault weapons – which we now know the shooter had – was not one of the others.
Watch the Fox gun culture below, from the May 18, 2018 Happening Now, via Media Matters.
UPDATE: Fox somehow "forgot" to mention that Rogers was also an adviser to the Trump campaign and now serves as chairman of the America Winning Coalition, a group dedicated to promoting Trump's agenda.