Fox News host Sean Hannity called for a massive armed force to “surround” every school and store in America after two mass shooters killed 31 people in an El Paso Walmart and a Dayton bar.
“I’d like to see the perimeter of every school in America surrounded, secured by retired police . . . military and I want guys to donate 15 hours,” Hannity said. “I think we could cover every school, every hour — add a metal detector. And I think we’re going to have better schools. Have one armed guard on every floor of every school, all over every mall, the perimeter and inside every hall of every mall.”
Hannity proposed an income tax exemption for ex-cops and soldiers who donate at least 15 hours.
“We can do that with stores. We can do that in malls. We can do that pretty much anywhere the public is,” Hannity said. “Courthouses, we can expand that out everywhere and keep Americans safe.”
This is a very bad idea:
As HuffPost pointed out, Hannity’s proposal is much more far-fetched than, say, an assault weapons ban and expanded gun background checks.
“There are close to 100,000 public and 35,000 private K-12 schools in the United States so a force large enough to ‘surround the perimeter’ and be on each floor would require several hundred thousand people, if not more,” HuffPost’s Ed Mazza wrote. “Statista reported that there were 116,000 shopping malls in the U.S. as of 2017, adding several hundred thousand more to the Hannity Force. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, there are currently 701,000 full-time sworn law enforcement officers in the country; the Hannity Force would essentially come close to matching or even exceeding those numbers, especially if his plan was expanded ‘everywhere’ to include other non-mall stores and shopping centers."
