'So the answer is more guns?' CNN host challenges House Republican's call for armed guards at schools

02 April 2023

CNN anchor Dana Bash sparred with United States Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) on Sunday's edition of State of the Union over how students can be kept safe in school.

Last week's mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee that killed six people – three of whom were children – reignited the national debate over firearms, which in 2022 surpassed car accidents as the leading cause of death of Americans under twenty-one years of age.

Progressives and advocates for reform want tighter restrictions on who should be allowed to own weapons. Second Amendment absolutist conservatives, many of whom are funded by the National Rifle Association, maintain that constitutional rights supersede public safety and that reducing the number of guns is a non-starter.

Mirroring a nearly identical conversation they had in May 2022 after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Bash and Crenshaw clashed over what measures should be implemented to prevent future massacres.

"The truth of the matter is if we had a minimum of, of two armed guards or police officers at every single school in America, you'd probably prevent these from here on out. That's the truth," Crenshaw declared.

A 2021 study published by the JAMA Network determined the opposite:

The well-documented weapons effect explains that the presence of a weapon increases aggression. Whenever firearms are present, there is room for error, and even highly trained officers get split-second decisions wrong. Prior research suggests that many school shooters are actively suicidal, intending to die in the act, so an armed officer may be an incentive rather than a deterrent. The majority of shooters who target schools are students of the school, calling into question the effectiveness of hardened security and active shooter drills. Instead, schools must invest in resources to prevent shootings before they occur.

Bash was completely unconvinced by Crenshaw's stance.

"Well, you said, you said that they're random. The, the one crew line in these deaths is that they're shootings, therefore they are done by guns. And guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the US. So it shouldn't helping save the lives of children be a top priority for you as a member of the House majority?" Bash asked Crenshaw.

"No, it absolutely should be, which is why I say I would look to the thing that would absolutely stop this, which is putting armed police officers at every school. Look, I, I visit a lot of schools. I do, I do talks at various schools. It's very rare, uh, that I go into a school, especially the newer ones, and they don't have some kind of armed police presence there at all times. That's a preventive measure that I know will, will stop this," Crenshaw said. "And there was nothing like that in these last few mass shootings. There's no armed guards there. So if I'm just looking for that actual solutions, that would be it."

Bash firmly pushed back.

"So the answer is more guns?" she responded.

"No. The answer is armed guards. Well, the answer is armed guards, right? Armed guard. Yes. More guards. The, the kind of guns that protect, protect the president, that protect you all at CNN. Is it easy to get into your headquarters at CNN? Absolutely not. There's armed guards there. Yeah, there's single points of entry. I think we should look at our schools as a place that is precious, uh, and, and have the same kind of security that your corporate offices do, that we do in Congress," Crenshaw insisted.

"You know, if, if we consider a place to be important where our children go to learn every day, it should have the same level of security as every other place. Whether it's not, whether it's a shopping mall or a corporate office, that's hard to get into," Crenshaw concluded. "You're, you're, you're not going to get rid of guns."

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