Granny, get your gun. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) told a rapt Kayleigh McEnany Tuesday on Fox News that grandparents could join a force of armed military vets and retired police officers to protect schools from shootings. (Watch the video below.)
McEnany, Donald Trump’s former White House press secretary, was rapt as Blackburn promoted her SAFE Schools Act, which would supply $900 million to “harden schools” with more security. The proposal, which she introduced after a Nashville school shooting in March, does nothing to address the root of the problem: easy access to powerful guns.
“To have this grant pool and to allow local school systems and local law enforcement to work together to bring in veterans and retired law enforcement to serve as a security officer at a school — they know how to use weapons,” Blackburn said. “They know to de-escalate situations. I’ve talked to a lot of them. They like this idea. They are grandparents like we are — my husband and I are grandparents — and they want to be there to help protect children.”
Blackburn said she proposed something similar after the 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and two teachers. In that case, hundreds of law enforcement personnel were slow to act while the shooter carried out the massacre.
Even McEnany’s own right-wing employer has conceded that most Americans favor stricter weapons restrictions. There have been more than 200 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. But Blackburn, like many Republicans, has pushed back against reasonable gun control in the name of the Second Amendment.
Blackburn said Tuesday it was “unseemly” that Democrats would reject her idea. She claimed on Fox News that her measure would provide fortress-like protection, including “bulletproof doors and the film on windows ... so that parents can have the confidence that their children are going to be safe.”
h/t Mediaite