Fox News Guest: Give Guns to Teachers
Reported by Judy - October 4, 2006 -
From the Fox News guest who suggested "Muslims only" lines at airports comes another wacky idea: arming school teachers to stop violence at schools.
Mike Gallagher, a conservative talk radio host, made the suggestion on Fox News' "Live Desk" hosted by Martha MacCallum on Wednesday (Oct. 4, 2006) during the A-List's discussion of recent school shootings, including the one at an Amish one-room school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania.
Fox News' Geraldo Rivera was arguing that the incident (and one last week in Bailey, Colorado) was the sign of a "new criminal phenomenon" which he called the "suicide sexual predator."
"If we don’t increase school security immediately in an emergency basis, we’re going to see … more and more copycats," Rivera said.
"We’ve got to have cops. We’ve got to have citizen patrols now. We’ve got to have the older boys in these schools being part of kind of a surveillance. They’ve got to have walkie-talkies and cell phones, if a 9-11 call had been placed sooner … they could possibly have saved some lives.”
"How about arming the teachers?" piped up Gallagher, adding, "It ain't going to happen with walkie-talkies. It's going to happen with guns, armed guards, whether it's police, whoever it is."
As others talked over him, Gallagher said, "if the teacher has a (inaudible), though" as he made a shooting motion with his thumb and index finger.
Rivera may have agreed at the end, saying where guns are legal he had no problem with it.
I wish Gallagher would have elaborated on his plan. If Fox News is going to continue to have this loon on, they should give him enough rope to hang himself. Will teachers wear the guns on their hips? Or does he expect the intruder will allow him or her to unlock the gun from its cabinet once he or she bursts in? Will it have a trigger lock? Or will it be left lying around so any kindergartener can pick it up and blow his or her head off?
