“Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary, said during her Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday that local authorities should decide whether guns should be barred from American schools,” vox.com reports, “citing the case of a school in Wyoming where a special fence protects students from bears.”
True story! Here’s her exchange with Connecticut Senator and gun control advocate Chris Murphy:
MURPHY: Do you think guns have any place in or around schools?
DEVOS: That is best left to locales and states to decide. If the underlying question is—
MURPHY: You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in schools?
DEVOS: I will refer back to [Wyoming] Sen. [Mike] Enzi and the school he was talking about in Wyoming. I think probably there, I would imagine that there is probably a gun in the schools to protect from potential grizzlies.
MURPHY: If President Trump moves forward with his plan to ban gun-free school zones, will you support that?
DEVOS: I will support what the president-elect does. If the question is around gun violence and the results of that, please know that my heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to gun violence.
Not exactly the best argument for eliminating Bush the Elder’s Gun Free School Zones Act — which would require an act of Congress to repeal — but we’ll take it! I mean, get rid of it. I only wish we could get rid of the sneering media coverage of her remark.
As for allowing cities and states to continue to ban guns in schools if and when the GFSZA takes a dirt nap, keep in mind that schools can opt out of the federal prohibition under the current law. Still, making them have to opt in would be a step forward. A step towards recognizing that the Second Amendment trumps ALL city and state laws, as the Supremes ruled in McDonald.
I’m having a hard time believing that the DNC still thinks gun control is a winning issue after the beating they have gotten over the past few years. Oh well… stay stupid DNC… Stay stupid.
this, above all, is our best hope for the future.
please stay stupid.
Bears? Okay, sure. Whatever gets and keeps you on our side.
Its actually happened.
http://www.outdoorhub.com/news/2015/10/16/curious-black-bear-enters-montana-high-school/
I think the Dem’s missed the spirit of her response, focusing on the unusual and insinuating it’s ridiculous – much as Dems are wont to do – because only Dem’s are all knowing and can see the future.
The suggestion I took from her comments was that an outright ban doesn’t provide for/support unforeseen situations. In other words less regulation is more better…er…r.
Huh?
Trump needs to find somebody else. She seems to be the epitome of a dumb blonde.
We already have too many dumb blondes such as pelosi and wasserman-schultz
Agree. We can’t afford egregious mistakes.
How about you educate yourself on her positions on the state of education in this country? Not everything revolves around guns. She’s actually a brilliant pick for Education Secretary, and her stance on guns is not the reason why.
Her first answer was fine, she should have stuck with it rather than try to use the ‘dangerous wild animal’ reference.
Grizzly bears aside she’s actually a terrible pick for Ed Sec.
Her for-profit charter schools in Michigan are terrible – getting lower scores than even some of the worst public schools. All she’s really good at is spreading lots and lots of money around to keep her for-profit schools from getting any real scrutiny or oversight. This is one pick Trump does deserve to lose.
“Her” charter schools? All she did was help get the legislation passed. And it’s good that it did pass.
It’s about time that public sector unions have their stranglehold on this country broken, and what better place to start than our education system? She is an advocate of private schools, school vouchers, and homeschooling. All are WONDERFUL things that, frankly, more people should be embracing.
She understands that more money being funneled in to already failing schools is NOT going to result in higher performance from the students.
Why do private schools need all that “oversight”? So that .gov can make sure that the children are only being taught in the way that .gov approves of? Bullshit.
Ultimately, all schools, whether public or private, need to answer first to the parents of the children that attend. Second, they need to answer to the communities they serve. The federal government has absolutely no right to interfere with education, AT ALL. Betsy DeVos understands that, and anything she can do to decentralize the education effort in favor of localized control will be a Godsend.
https://credo.stanford.edu/pdfs/MI_report_2012_FINAL_1_11_2013_no_watermark.pdf
according to this study, MI charter schools outperform MI public schools. the performance gap is even greater narrowed down to only Detroit.
“Brilliant pick”? Hardly. My wife is a teacher, and comes from a family of teachers, so we watched the confirmation hearing with great interest. This woman didn’t have a solid response to any of the questions put to her. Her go-to response seemed to be “if confirmed, I look forward to working with you to address this issue.”
I’ve been impressed with the majority of Trump’s cabinet picks, but he needs to tap someone else for education.
A woman billionaire doesn’t get there by being stupid. Think maybe, just maybe that’s what she hopes those Libtards will think too?
“A woman billionaire doesn’t get there by being stupid.”
Not necessarily…
DeVos is married into the family that owns Scamway, er, Amay, that multi-level marketing company.
Her brother Erik Prince is a former Navy SEAL who founded the ‘Blackwater’ security company.
The DeVos – Prince clan is worth some *serious* money…
Her father sold the auto parts company he founded for over a billion dollars in 1996.
She married a man whose father co-founded Amway and installed his son/her husband in every job he had.
I’m not saying she isn’t intelligent, just that she didn’t earn her billions.
Obviously what Wyoming needed was a Bear-free Schools Act. But yeah, not the best way to answer this.
Dont be so sure, this just happened in “Lips” Murphy’s home State, could have just as easily shown up in a schools playground.
http://fox6now.com/2017/01/18/bobcat-attacks-3-women-eating-lunch-in-connecticut/
My sister taught school in Eastern Oregon in a place where kids walked or rode horses to school and came armed, as there were rattlesnakes, wolves, coyotes, and, yes, bears out and about. There were lockers by the school office for the various firearms.
There were occasional fights at school, in spitting distance from those lockers. Did any of the kids ever turn to a gun for a fight? Nope.
This was prior to invasion from California correct?
Several years ago a woman was killed by a mountain lion, just off the property of Sacramento State University, next to the America river. When I was a kid, I road the same bike trail she was jogging on when she was killed.
A couple of years ago another mountain lion killed a mountain biker in LA hills. That same lion attacked another rider, several daus latter. But she survived.
About 25 years ago the voters in California voted to end the hunting of lions. Only the state can kill them now. Now as the population of lions grows I expect to see more lion attacks.
I know they have been seen in the Berkeley hills area in California.
Trumps education Secretary nominee sounds like a states rights woman. If she is that’s good enough for me.
We had a lot of kids with guns in their cars and who carried knives as a daily thing.
No one was ever shot or stabbed way, way, way back when I was in high school… at the turn of the century…the last turn of the century.
I’m glad you are still around.
She couldn’t have said “Name one time a murder, rape, or other crime was stopped because of a sign on a wall”?
^^^ Love it ^^^
She should have said “Yes I support guns in schools.” Followed up by “Unless you think we can stop an active shooter with insults and gun shaped poptarts'”
Just because they sometimes walk upright doesn’t make them bears.
Look….. chiraqs football team isn’t that bad.
HA! Hey the baby bears are playing again in 2 months:)
The dumbocrat azzhole was trying to trip her up. She stated she’d support whatever order Donnie did. Good enough…HOME SCHOOL.
Yes. Let’s eliminate gfz’s. But let’s also eliminate a federal level department of education. The local community can do a better job of educating their kids.
+1
Not directly relevant to this post, but I was thinking earlier today (always dangerous, I know) about the fight NAACP and other organizations are waging against charter schools … on the grounds that they aren’t accountable for their performance.
That rather strongly implies they believe our public schools are in fact accountable now … and that they’re generally content with the performance they’re delivering. Which is just mind-boggling, and not in a good way.
I’ve never understood why the NAACP would insist on sending black children to crappy inner city schools that aren’t going to improve. Government at any level isn’t going to make the necessary investment. It’s almost like they want to condemn every black child to a poor education.
The NAACP leadership sends it’s kids to private schools. Some even attended the same schools Donald Trump sent his children to.
You don’t need a gun to stop a grizzly. Just get yourself a KA-BAR.
…Also prohibited in many schools (all schools in Vermont).
My wife works for a public high school. The stories she brings home are troubling (to put it mildly).
Vice-principal Brick Tamland also views bears as a security concern.
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so’s he knew every tree
Kilt him a b’ar when he was only three
Davey, Davey Crockett, king of the wild frontier
Why anyone would kill a three year old b’ar is beyond me.
Perhaps someone in the “gun community” (that would be us, folks) should give her a gentle but firm reproval that “gun violence” is a term used by the gun-grabbers. Violence is violence, be it for good or ill, and the only difference is in how it is used.
She’s an idiot…even by governmental standards.
Do you actually know anything about her other than what you read in this post?
If so, please share what about her makes her an idiot.
If not, shut up. We don’t need more people talking out of their asshole in this world.
She should have been better briefed on Murphy. This is the only issue that Jackass cares about and it should have been a lot easier to anticipate that line of questioning.
I had a friend in high school that moved in from Kodiak,Alaska and they used to carry to and from school as well because of real wildlife concerns, with a locker for the firearms during the day as well. Never as much as a negligent discharge, never mind any problems with the students behavior. Too bad all parents aren’t forced into taking the time to teach their children how to be human beings, not animals.
Yep…and the point she made is that just because schools in Wyoming or Alaska need honest bear defense doesn’t mean that a school in suburban New jersey needs the federal govt to mandate a loaded .45-70 lever action in the principals office.
She is a proponent of the Fed Dept of Ed allowing the states to regulate the schools based on the issues that the state faces with the Fed largely stepping back to a role assisting the state in acquiring federal grants for funding of those services.
Reading with context can sometimes be a struggle for those on here.
Didn’t know we were debating the context of her statement, just the statement itself. Take your holier than thou attitude and cram it in your Hillary hole…Richard!
“A step towards recognizing that the Second Amendment trumps ALL city and state laws, as the Supremes ruled in McDonald.”
Wrong. Well, yes and no, but mostly no. First, McDonald merely incorporated tne 2nd Amendment on the states. That’s the “yes” part. However, in Heller, the Court ruled on the boundaries of the 2A. In Heller, the Court explicitly declared that the 2A does not invalidate long standing regulations on carrying and possessing firearms by certain classes of people, like felons, or in certain places, like schools and government buildings. That’s the “no” part.
So the 2A does supercede state and local laws……except where it doesn’t. That there exist categories of law where it doesn’t presupposes that the 2A doesn’t supercede state and local laws absolutely.
why didn’t she throw the crazies-with-guns school shooting epidemic talking point back in Murphy’s face?
I seriously did a double-take when she said that. My guess at the time was that she was trying to distract and confuse the senators.
Cities and states to continue to ban guns in schools if and when the GFSZA takes a dirt nap, keep in mind that schools can opt out https://www.bestessaytips.com/review_essay.php of the federal prohibition under the current law. Still, making them have to opt in would be a step forward. Guns might belong in schools due to the threat posed by grizzly bears.
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