Steny Hoyer: Arming Teachers, ‘Turning the Schools into Armed Fortresses’ Won’t Make Them Safer

On Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) pushed back against the notion that arming teachers would help prevent future mass school shootings.

“CNN Newsroom” host Jim Sciutto asked Hoyer about the value of the House passing symbolic gun legislation, knowing there would not be enough support in the Senate to get it passed into law.

Hoyer bemoaned that they had not figured out a message yet, “other than turning our schools into armed fortresses.” He decried the arming of teachers, saying it would not make schools safer.

“We haven’t found what those messages are yet, other than turning our schools into armed fortresses,” Hoyer replied.

“Now, look, I’m for having security officers in schools to keep our schools safe. I’m for keeping doors locked. But the theory that if we just give more and more people armed, whether they’re teachers, employees of the school, if we just give more and more people arms, somehow we’re going to be safer, that is absolutely not the case,” he added. “It’s not the fact. And this happens nowhere else in the world. Not in big countries, not in democratic countries, not in dictatorships — no other country in the world has the gun violence that America has.”

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