On Wednesday, Late Night host Seth Meyers addressed the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old wielding an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle with high-capacity magazines entered Robb Elementary School and opened fire, killing 19 schoolchildren and two adults. Meyers was critical of congressional Republicans (and honorary Republican Joe Manchin) for spouting the same usual excuses in the wake of the tragedy, the 27th school shooting this year, instead of addressing the glaring lack of gun control in America.
“This is the same Senate that moved with the speed of a Saturn V rocket to give Supreme Court justices more security when some people were picketing outside their homes, so that should give you a sense of their priorities,” Meyers said. “When they do want to protect someone, they’re capable of doing it quickly.”’
He continued: “And while the Manchins and Mitch McConnells of the world are offering their empty words and refusing to take action, the most depraved people in our politics are suggesting that instead of doing the obvious thing that many other countries have done successfully, which is to simply pass laws regulating the number of guns in the country and the ability to easily get them, we should instead arm teachers and essentially turn schools into fortified military bases.”
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In the wake of the Uvalde mass shooting, Ted Cruz suggested that schools needed more armed law enforcement officers on campus—a viewpoint echoed by Fox News’ Sean Hannity, who went a step further and said we should give retired members of the military tax breaks in exchange for arming themselves and manning the perimeter of schools. (Uvalde had an armed UCISD officer who engaged with the shooter prior to his entering the school but was shot and neutralized; responding police also exchanged fire with the shooter before he entered the school but were ineffective, and then reportedly refused to enter the school to stop him.)
Cruz and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick further argued that schools need just a single entrance, which would be great if there happened to be, say, a fire (I’m kidding, of course). Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton claimed that we should arm and train teachers. And Fox News guest Pat Brosnan, a retired NYPD detective, even floated the idea of boobytrapping schools with “man traps” and “trip wires.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind? You guys want to turn schools into maximum-security prisons with man traps and trip wires and teachers carrying guns?” exclaimed Meyers. “If these people had their way, everything would be a scene out of fucking RoboCop. There are truly no words for how grotesque this is. They want to arm teachers, and yet they’re not even willing to throw enough money at schools to get them history books that don’t end with the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
“It doesn’t always have to be like this,” he later added. “We can change things. And if you’re a person in a position of power you must act.”
