During Fox News’s coverage Tuesday night of America’s most recent mass shooting, in which an 18-year-old gunman slaughtered 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, it was apparently too soon to discuss gun reform—but the right time to propose that schools be equipped with booby traps, armed military contractors, and bulletproof blankets.
After Joe Biden demanded that Congress “stand up to the gun lobby” in a Tuesday night address, Fox News host Laura Ingraham condemned the president for attempting to use the dead bodies of Robb Elementary students to boost his favorability numbers, suggesting he spoke for “selfish” reasons. She also claimed that Biden had no intention of comforting the families of victims or uniting America. “He spoke tonight because…in today’s twisted world, it’s considered perfectly appropriate to exploit the massacre of innocent little kids in order to try to turn around your own sagging poll members,” she said. “Biden [is] at the lowest approval of his presidency, 36%, so this attempt at political resuscitation on Biden’s part, it’s despicable.”
Likewise, Fox News guest Buck Sexton told Tucker Carlson that those who criticize politicians for failing to pass any legislation that could prevent future shootings are only “hurting the situation” by opportunistically using the Uvalde shooting “to bludgeon the other side with platitudes about ‘we must do something.’”
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On Hannity, Pat Brosnan, one of the host’s guests, called for the government to “utilize smart technology” to curb school shootings while dismissing renewed calls for stricter firearm regulations. “We need to install man traps…a series of interlocking doors at the school entrance that are triggered by a trip wire…and it traps the shooter like a rat,” he added, seemingly describing the kinds of armored doors used in banks and prisons. “When he’s trapped like a rat, we’re buying time, the most precious commodity these children can ever get is time to run, time to hide, time to get away from this madman and his bullets. It’s trip wires. It’s man traps. It’s not labor. It’s not gun control.”
Also during the program, Sean Hannity urged the U.S. government to hire military and police contractors to patrol schools. “[Place] retired military, retired law enforcement outside the perimeter of every school in the country, they can donate their time, we can offer them tax breaks, no income tax in the state, no income tax federally, 10 hours a week, and we can have every school in America covered,” the host said, suggesting that it would cut down on “police response times.”
But in this case, police were initially unable to stop the shooter, who was wearing body armor, from entering the school after he crashed nearby. “That’s when he attempted to enter the school where he was engaged by law enforcement,” Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Erick Estrada told CNN, adding that the gunman “was able to enter the premises and then from there that’s when he entered several classrooms and started shooting his firearm.”
Another solution pitched on the network came via Maureen O’Connell, a former FBI agent, who suggested that the onus is on parents to invest in bulletproof armor for their children and “threat assessment[s]” on school grounds. “Instead of parents buying their kids all these tools and toys and games, invest in the classroom to make it safer,” she told host Bret Baier. “They have blankets that you can put up on the wall that are colorful and beautiful, but they’re ballistic blankets.”
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O’Connell also partially blamed the “anti-police narrative” for mass shootings, claiming––without evidence––that such sentiments force “people not to call police when they have these type of concerns.”
Colion Noir, a gun-culture social media influencer, said on Fox News that American schools should be “so hardened”––i.e., heavily defended and inaccessible to the public in the same way that “closed” military towns are––that it is impossible for shooters to penetrate them. “I can only imagine if Joe Biden had younger kids and they went to a certain school, do you know how hard it would be to attack that school?” Noir said. “These kids are the most precious things we have, so not putting them in the position where they are the most protected as well is kind of odd to me.”
Mark Levin, a talk radio personality who hosts a weekend Fox News program, suggested on Tuesday that bringing “Judeo-Christian principles” and prayer into schools could help stop future mass shootings. “This is not so easily addressed by politics…. These lunatics don’t really care what laws you passed,” he said. “I think a little bit more faith would help in the schools and in the public square. It’s not such a terrible thing, and yet, we have secularized everything.”
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