There have been a lot of cringe-worthy moments during the confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s cabinet. But one of the worst–if not THE worst–came on Tuesday. Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Secretary of Education, revealed that she supports having guns in schools. She told Senator Chris Murphy that we may need to keep guns on hand because–wait for it–they may need protection from a rampaging grizzly bear.
Don’t take my word for it. Watch for yourself.
As if that wasn’t enough, DeVos added she wouldn’t stand in the way of Trump’s plan to end “gun free zones” in our schools.
There’s a reason the Connecticut Democrat had such an incredulous look on his face. Before moving to the Senate, he represented a congressional district that included Newtown–home of Sandy Hook Elementary School. Indeed, he was still dumbfounded later in the day when he took to Twitter.
Tonight #BetsyDeVos would not oppose putting guns in our schools. I was shaken to the core by her answer. So should every American parent.
— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 18, 2017
If DeVos is too worried about bears running wild to give a straight answer about guns in school, maybe she ought to have a chat with Erica Lafferty, the daughter of Sandy Hook principal Dawn Hochsprung. For those who don’t remember, Hochsprung was the first of 26 people to die at Sandy Hook. It would have almost certainly been more than that had she not heard popping sounds in the hallway that turned out to be gunshots. When she and two of her colleagues went to investigate, they ran into Adam Lanza. One look at his AR-15 clone was enough to make Hochsprung yell, “Shooter! Stay put.” She then lunged into the path of Lanza’s volley–a move that, by most accounts, saved hundreds of lives.
So you’ll have to pardon Lafferty if any “(noun) (verb) more guns” talk gets on her last nerve. In an op-ed that will run in the next edition of Glamour magazine, Lafferty minces no words–DeVos’ answer wasn’t just tone-deaf, it was dangerous.
“DeVos is right that grizzly bears don’t belong in schools. But neither do guns. By not taking a definitive stance on keeping guns out of our schools, she’s posing a real threat to our children’s safety.”
Lafferty thinks this response proves that DeVos has given little thought to “the important role of the Education Secretary in keeping students and faculty safe.” She fears that if Trump–and presumably, DeVos–have their way, teachers would have to “add ‘sharpshooter’ to their job descriptions,” and “duck and cover drills” will become a way of life in our schools.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety–of which Lafferty is partnership director–there have been at least 210 school shootings since Sandy Hook. Lafferty doesn’t think this problem will be solved by putting guns in the hands of teachers. A better solution is teaching people how to properly store guns. More than half of the shootings whose source could be identified involved a gun brought from home–and more often than not, it wasn’t stored in a safe location to begin with.
Another solution would be to “close the loopholes in our gun laws”–a solution that has overwhelming support from the American people, but has been derailed due to the NRA-imposed inertia on Capitol Hill. But such solutions actually require making some effort to study the issue. It has been amply established that this is well beyond DeVos’ capacity. Then again, she was only picked because Trump had a massive political debt to pay to the religious right.
This isn’t the first time that Lafferty has teed up a major right-wing luminary. You may recall that she went after Trump himself for his close ties to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who has been one of the most notorious peddlers of Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. Among other things, Jones claims that Hochsprung and the other victims are still alive. As I write this, Trump hasn’t bothered to answer Lafferty. Don’t count on DeVos answering her either.
(featured image courtesy DonkeyHotey, available via a Creative Commons-BY license)
