Gun store-owning House Republican demands arming teachers during hearing on Uvalde school shooting

U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde is demanding that elected officials give teachers guns and ensure they are legally allowed to carry them in their classrooms. The far-right Georgia Republican who owns several gun stores also demanded “Gun Free Zone” signs in school neighborhoods be replaced with signs threatening teachers will “do anything” to protect children.

“To those who say that teachers or staff will not take up arms to protect their students, I say they will,” Clyde told the House Oversight Committee Wednesday during its highly-publicized hearing on gun violence focusing on the victims and families of those killed in recent mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde Texas.

He praised teachers “who have heroically given their lives to protect their students,” saying “it’s time to give them the tools to help them better protect those children so they have a fighting chance to survive and encounter from someone who is bent on harming them.”

Rep. Clyde, who has owned Clyde Armory since 1991 and was first elected to Congress in 2020, made no mention that he is asking teachers to die rather than take action to reduce gun violence and the number and types of firearms in the U.S.

Clyde was widely denounced after claiming the January 6 insurrection was not an insurrection and looked like a “normal tourist visit.”