Sean is joined by experts Joe Eaton and John Lott to discuss the tragic shootings in Florida and what Americans could do to improve school security. Is there more that we can do? Should we staff schools with retired policemen and military? Should we invest in physical security measures? The search for real reform is on... The Sean Hannity Show is on weekdays from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on iHeartRadio and Hannity.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Write down our toll-free telephone number if you want to be a part of this extravaganza 800-941.
Sean, if you want to be a part of the program, you know, one thing always stands out in the midst of tragedy, horror, death, terrorism, whatever it happens to be, the school shooting, the evil on display.
It just is, you see and always see another side of the human experience and the human soul.
And it was captured with this football coach.
And here you have a guy, reportedly one of the most liked guys.
He was literally shielding students yesterday during this massacre at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School.
His name is Aaron Face is his name.
Once a security guard at the school, apparently went to the school himself.
And this guy gives his life protecting these kids that he loved under the most unbelievable circumstances.
And everybody apparently loved this guy.
And, you know, it's so sad and it's so tragic.
And, you know, we've gotten a lot of information in just the last, you know, 24 hours.
And so he got off the air.
Literally, we were on the air yesterday and it was reported up until we ended the show about 58 minutes after the hour, 57 minutes after the hour that only two people had died.
We were off the air four minutes and it was 17 deaths in this shooting yesterday.
It is now the third largest shooting, worst U.S. school shootings ever.
And I know that, you know, when we get this information, everybody was saying on TV last night and today that I've watched, if you see something, you got to say something.
Well, I want to play for you an interview of a guy that saw something and it was online and it was on YouTube and it was from this guy Nicholas Cruz And he's saying, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
And he actually said something, and he said it to the FBI.
And the FBI followed up the next day.
And then we see all his social media fingerprints.
And all we see on those social media fingerprints is what?
You know, we see this guy is the guy.
More than a number of these kids had said, quote, the headline in the New York Post today is Gun Craze Florida teen joked that he'd shoot up the school.
But more importantly, that's not a joke.
Everybody was saying, this is the guy.
He's thrown out of school and for disciplinary issues.
He's sent to another school, which that never makes sense to me.
Oh, we'll throw you out of this school, but we'll keep you in the district and we'll show you to another, we'll send you to another school.
That never made sense either.
And this stuff happens.
And, you know, I'm going to play this for you.
And it's not see something, say something, because people saw it and said it.
And he posted it.
And more often than not, be it a shooting like this or a terrorism event, we're finding that these people are telegraphing what is in their sick, ugly, twisted, evil minds.
And we're not capturing it soon enough.
Anyway, here is the guy that had picked up this comment on YouTube.
September 24th, 2017, I sent a screenshot of a comment on one of my videos.
Now, people keep asking me which video was it.
I don't know.
I don't remember what video it was.
When I saw the comment come through on my studio app on my iPhone, I screenshotted the comment.
I hit the report button, reported it to YouTube.
Of course, they removed the comment.
And then I tried to email it to the FBI.
I found an email address, tips at FBI.gov, sent it to that email address.
I immediately got back a domain error.
Basically, that email address didn't exist.
So I looked up the number for our local field office and I called and I left a message.
Well, the next day, I had two FBI agents standing in my office taking down the information, taking copies of the screenshot and asking me questions that, of course, I couldn't answer.
You know, all it was on my channel was a comment.
You know, people leave pretty heinous comments on a pretty regular basis on this channel.
And I really didn't think anything of it.
But what I did think was, you know, this comment said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
And I knew that I couldn't just ignore that.
The red flags were all over the place here in this particular case.
You know, here you have a kid.
He lost his mother apparently three months earlier.
He was living with some family.
I don't know why the family allowed this kid, who's obviously troubled, to go out and buy the AR-15.
But this is not a gun debate.
And I'll explain why in a second.
He's expelled from school.
He has all of the social imprint of somebody that would do something like this.
And nobody, after he's expelled, did anybody follow up?
Was he offered at any point any help from anybody that knew that this guy had these obvious problems?
Every kid that I saw interviewed for the most part that knew this kid said nobody's surprised that he would do something like this.
Then you have what this guy's explaining here.
The FBI is notified and that he's saying, well, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
He was involved in apparently incidents of animal cruelty.
And, you know, that's always a bad indicator.
You know, any kid that's hurting an animal, at some point, there's something wrong.
At any point, there's something wrong there.
But I want to be a professional school shooter.
We had the red flags that we all say we want.
And this guy, this was premeditated.
This was planned.
This was orchestrated.
This was just, he wanted and planned for a massacre.
And that's what he got yesterday.
Now, I'll tell you what I'm not going to do.
And I talked a little bit about this yesterday.
This is not, I'm not interested, if you want to call the show today, in any predictable talking points about guns.
I have a five-minute montage I can play and just snippets, one right after the other, and we'll get to probably some of it later in the program today, of within hours.
We don't even know what actually happened.
And people go out with their talking points and literally, this is the tragedy.
Let's go right back to the same old arguments we have heard time after time after time.
Now the attack is against, okay, AR-15s.
Well, if you want to know what the number one, the worst school shooting was, if you remember, this was at Virginia Tech in 2007.
And I covered that shooting.
And you had a loner who suffered from mental health problems.
And he shot a student and a resident assistant in a dormitory.
And then he headed into a classroom building where he chained and locked several doors.
And then he opened fire with handguns.
So those people that are going to make the argument in that particular case, 32 people were killed with handguns.
So, okay, if the argument is we're going to get rid of AR-15s, all right, then the next shooting, is that going to be with handguns?
We're going to get rid of all handguns.
And at the end, there are people, I think, in this country that don't believe in the Second Amendment.
Here's the bottom line, though.
In my 30 years of doing radio and my 23 years on TV now, I can tell you, I don't think anybody's mind is going to be changed on the issue.
So the idea that something happens again and we go back to the same predictable talking points to me is a waste of time.
If we really, really, really care about security at our schools, as the president said yesterday, no kid should have to worry going into a school.
Every kid in every school in every town and every city in this country should feel free and safe.
There's a way to do it.
And it doesn't involve a discussion about the Second Amendment at all.
And here's my solution.
And feel free to weigh in on it if you think it's got flaws that you can add to it or you got a better solution.
I mean, at the end of the day, we don't want this to happen again.
I mean, we can go to the Virginia Tech.
We had 32 people killed there.
You had Adam Lanza.
He shot his mother to death in her bed driving a Sandy Hook.
Remember that?
In Newtown, Connecticut.
That particular case gunned down 20 children in addition to six staff members.
That was in 2012.
This doesn't just happen.
It happened in Clinton's administration, Columbine, George W. Bush's.
It happened in Barack Obama's and now in Donald Trump's.
It's not about politics.
And you get the same old debates.
I think it's pretty simple.
Every school now in the country should have a comprehensive security threat assessment by professionals.
Now you're saying, well, where are we going to get the money for that?
Probably the local police would be more than glad to, and they're already getting paid to go to the local school district, spend the time, make the proper threat assessment, and come up with a comprehensive plan on how to keep the kids in the schools safe.
Now, I guess the most controversial part of my solution is going to be this.
Every school is going to have to hire enough retired, former, trained military, retired, former, trained police officers, and you're going to have to secure the perimeter.
You're going to have to have every entry point secured.
You're going to have to make sure that every kid that gets in that building belongs in that building.
I can tell you what it's like in New York City post 9-11.
The building that I am broadcasting from, I can't get in without an ID that has my picture on it.
And similarly, if somebody's coming up, they're going to be a guest on the program.
Same thing with Fox.
You can't get in the building.
There is security literally everywhere.
Well, if we really want to secure our schools, there's nobody that's going to be able to convince me that that is mission impossible or a task we cannot accomplish because we're too smart.
We've been able to do it.
If you've got, you know, 100-story buildings in New York that you can secure, and similarly, and in some cases, maybe that's going to include metal detectors.
But the bottom line is this: it is something that could be accomplished without going to the same old, tired, predictable talking points that each side is going to have.
Because in the 30 years I've been doing this, I'm pretty convinced that I have carried a weapon my entire adult life.
I've been trained in the use of a firearm since I am 11.
I've been a marksman since I'm 12 in terms of pistol marksmen.
I have carried in New York, Rhode Island, California, Alabama, and Georgia.
I've had carry permits.
You know, I was adding up the years.
I have carried more than half my life a firearm.
And I believe in the safety, security, responsibility in being a gun owner with a concealed carry permit.
And I'd say, I don't think everybody has to be trained.
You know, I don't think teachers, the teachers want to teach.
They don't want to be, if they do want to, that's great.
Another person on the front lines.
Now, can it prevent every school shooting?
Probably it's not.
There's no such thing as perfect security, but I think it could stop a lot of it, number one.
And then you have people there on the ground that can minimize the ability to hurt, injure, and kill other people.
And that's called a solution to a problem.
Rather than, you know, the same points that people make after every shooting and then nothing happens.
If the idea is we don't want to see what we witnessed yesterday, 17 dead kids, 14 or so others injured, families devastated, broken.
I mean, the worst thing you can imagine.
Do we want arguing the same points that has gotten us nowhere isn't going to do a thing?
If you can secure any one building, then you should secure every building.
A complete, thorough, comprehensive security threat assessment at every school, and then the manpower in place.
I know it was, well, there was an armed guard.
Okay, but the school had multiple buildings and 3,200 kids.
We needed more people.
And that would, to me, be the best, that's the best idea that I can think of.
You have a better one, 800-941, Sean.
So all day I've been hearing, oh, there's been 18 mass school shootings this year.
I'm like, what?
I follow the news every day.
18?
Well, the Washington Examiner has now debunked all of this.
Of the 18 school shootings listed in the, by apparently this some gun control group that put this out, Every Town for a Gun Safety Support Fund is what they call it.
You know, a full 13 of the 18 did not result in even a single student death.
And the one death that did result from one of those 13 was a suicide death.
I can give you the whole list here.
It's neither here nor there.
All of, you know, this to me becomes the noise.
And if none of us, you can't watch, if you have a heart, mind, and soul, and not be impacted by what happened yesterday.
You can't watch these kids one after another.
You know, I finally at some point said to Linda, how big is this school?
Turns out there's 3,200 kids that go to that school.
And you'll say, well, they had a security guard, an armed security guard.
It's not enough.
If you give every single solitary school a full comprehensive security threat assessment by professionals, you implement all of the changes in accordance with the fire marshal.
I know there's certain complications that you're going to have to work out.
You can't tell me that we can't do a hell of a lot better very quickly, especially by hiring former military, retired military, retired police, former police officers, trained officials, trained officers, and enough of them.
And of course, you've got to control anybody that gets into any of these buildings.
And I know schools, there are schools that I know that literally don't even let parents in until they show IDs.
So it can be done.
It is being done.
It's being done successfully.
There are models, paradigms that we can follow.
Anyway, we'll get your thoughts next.
800-941, Sean, as we continue.
All right, the president spoke today, 25 to the top of the hour, saying he plans to head on down to Parkland and addressing, obviously, the school shooting.
And he said he's going to push for action on mental health issues, making schools more secure.
He said it's not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we're making a difference, he said.
We've got to actually make that difference.
I don't think I've ever seen the president in somber tone, emotional at moments, I felt, and saying the nation's praying for the victims and their families of this terrible violence, hatred, and evil.
He lamented the deaths of all these young people that were full of lives in front of them, declaring that no child, no teacher, nobody should ever be in danger in an American school.
So I think that's going to be, look, I am just convinced we can fix the problem and solve the problem.
And solutions, I think, should be everybody's motivation here.
Not political points, not political arguments, not talking points.
I think one of the saddest things that I saw today, the school's football team's Twitter account confirmed the death of this hero football coach.
Said it's with great sadness that our football family has learned about the death of Iron Feiss.
It said he was an assistant football coach and a security guard.
He selflessly shielded students from the shooter when he was shot.
He died a hero.
He will forever be in our hearts and our memories.
Just every time something happens, you always just stop.
You think these heroes come out of nowhere.
Although, apparently this was in this guy's DNA.
Apparently, everybody loved this guy.
He passed around midnight tonight, last night, and just dies a hero.
I mean, if you look at the police, SWAT, sheriff, the superintendent, the governor, the attorney general, the president, everybody.
I mean, you watch these first responders.
Everybody did their job.
Phenomenal.
But I argue that the only way every school needs a comprehensive security threat assessment.
We did learn a little bit more about this shooter.
Miami Herald printed today.
And it goes on to say, friends said he spoke little of his relatives.
He and his brother were adopted when they were young by a couple named Linda and Roger Cruz.
They lived in Long Island, and apparently they raised the boys right there in Parkland, Florida.
Roger Cruz died over a decade ago.
His wife Linda struggled with the boys, said a former sister-in-law.
She did the best she could.
They were adopted.
They did have some emotional issues, she said.
The sister-in-law said that she believed the Cruz was on medication to deal with his emotional fragility, adding that his adopted mother was struggling with Nicholas the last couple of years.
His mom died a few months ago, and Cruz moved in with a friend whose family lives in Broward County.
They took him in, gave him his own bedroom.
He worked at apparently a dollar store, went to school for at-risk youth, according to the Fort Lauderdale attorney who was representing the family.
And apparently he had the AR-15.
The gun was to remain locked up, and I guess apparently he either broke in or he had another key for it.
The morning, yesterday morning, said it's Valentine's Day.
I don't go to school on Valentine's Day.
The family had no idea, obviously, this was going to happen.
It looks like a lot of people saw a troubled kid and were trying hard to help this kid in whatever capacity they can.
Look, it's not easy if you're an intact family.
Then all of a sudden you're bringing somebody into your home.
That's difficult.
Catherine Herridge was just on with Shep Smith, and she asked the FBI if they tried to identify the IP address of the computer used to post the message, I want to be a professional school shooter.
And Herridge noted that the IP address should have been easily obtainable.
And it would have been easy to track down Nicholas Cruz once they had the IP address.
So far, we don't have a response.
You know, look, there were a lot of red flags here.
People did say something, which is the right thing to do.
Although I know sometimes, you know, people are afraid to say stuff.
What other news do we have here?
All right.
You know what?
Let me get to some phone calls.
A lot of you want to weigh in on this.
And let's start with Travis in Twin Falls, Idaho.
He disagrees with me, apparently.
What's up, Travis?
How are you?
Hello.
I'm doing well, sir.
And you?
I'm good, sir.
What can I do for you?
I really enjoy your show.
I always listen to it.
I'm a school bus driver, so I put it on while I'm taking the kids home.
I get to enjoy it.
They get to hear a different viewpoint.
I think that your heart's in the right place, and I think that a lot of what you have would be very good things to do.
I think that the problem is that if we put this idea that it's all on the outside security, that gives kids a false sense of security.
It teaches them that they are either helpless victims or criminals in waiting.
And it at least teaches them they need to rely on the government outside of them to keep them safe and protect them from themselves and from each other.
I would say that.
Well, what's the alternative?
How are you going to guarantee that these kids are safer in their schools?
Give me an idea.
I think that we should all be treated.
We should all be trained to be our own first responders.
You have Jonathan going to come on it.
He wrote the book.
Listen, let me tell you something.
I know this for a fact.
As somebody, for example, that has been trained in the use of firearms.
I can tell you right now, my kids, I've taken them to the range.
I've taught them gun safety.
They know every, they could care less.
Like, I was passionate at 11 years of age that I wanted to be a good marksman.
Everybody has their own individual interests.
My kids are like, yeah, dad, okay, that was fun.
Can we go to eat now?
That's about how much interest they show.
Same with self-defense.
I train five days a week because I love it.
It's a passion of mine.
But it's also a lot of hard work, and it takes a lot of dedication and a lot of commitment and a lot of time.
You got to really run a disciplined life to do that.
The idea that we're going to ask kids that are teenagers to be the front line of their defense, I think is a bit much.
I think the answer, the solution is we have professionals that secure every building in New York City, every big building in New York City, every office building in New York City.
And most department buildings have doormen.
And it's near, if not impossible, to get into any of these buildings without passing security.
So the idea, you know, after all these incidents that we're just going to say, all right, you kids, you be self-reliant, I don't see that working.
And I'm a big believer in individual responsibility and self-reliance and all of that.
But, you know, when you're in a controlled environment like this, I don't see that you can get out there and start defending yourself if somebody comes in unbeknownst to you.
Again, you know, what are we going to do?
We're going to arm teenagers.
It's not going to happen, nor should it happen.
So I just disagree.
And, you know, you got to ask yourself this question.
Forget, again, I'm asking everybody to put away their talking points.
If you start giving me talking points, I'm moving on.
But if you're in any administrative building, I don't care where you are, court building, any administrative building, and there's an active shooter, would you want to know that there were trained professional, armed, retired military, trained professional, armed, retired, trained police?
The answer is yes.
And if you answer no to that, it makes no sense to me at all.
It just doesn't.
And I think we have the capacity, if we have the will, to really put security of these kids first to get the job done.
Anyway, let's go.
Let's say hi to Lori is in Minnesota.
Hi, Lori.
How are you?
Glad you called.
Thank you, Sean.
I wanted to tell you about our school's program to keep our students and teachers safe.
And it's a national program based on the ALICE program.
Are you familiar with that?
I am not.
No.
It's an acronym for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.
And essentially, what it is is that we, as teachers and administrators, we all have each other's cell phone numbers.
And if there, there's only one unlocked entrance to our school building once all the students are in.
So there's only one entry point.
From that point, all over the building, they have cameras to isolate where the shooter is.
They will isolate the people that are in the direct line of contact.
You know, obviously, we're not going to evacuate those, but they're going to evacuate everybody else around the building while police.
So you've had a full assessment.
You've had a full threat assessment, a comprehensive security assessment, and you're saying that this works.
You're saying that based on your knowledge of all these other shootings, if these plans were put in place elsewhere, you believe it would have worked.
Yes, but I am amazed at the size of the campus in Florida.
It was huge.
The campus is huge, and it's bigger than the small towns that I live in around here.
Well, that means that you're going to have to hire more people.
Look, securing the perimeter, I mean, if every kid that goes into the school and every teacher that goes into the school, look, I have an idea to get into both buildings that I work at here in New York City.
It doesn't bother me.
I just pull it out of my pocket.
I hit the security.
I literally have to walk through a secure gate every day to get into the buildings I work in.
And it doesn't bother me.
Why couldn't every student have that?
There are more than 3,200 people that work in the buildings that I'm in.
These buildings are massive.
So I think that's very doable.
And then you have, you know, once the kids are in, then you have to have some perimeter monitoring of some kind.
And I don't care if it's done via, you know, some type of security cameras with somebody actually watching or actually having people at key points around the perimeter of the school, then strategically placed within the school.
And, you know, I would bet over time that the kids would get to love the police officers that they met.
I bet they'd love the former military guys that they met.
I bet it would be great for relations.
They'd begin to understand them.
They can talk to the kids.
I don't know.
I mean, I remember when I was in school, I was best friends with the janitor.
I'm going to be smoking in the bathroom every chance I got.
And he never ratted me out.
But you know what I'm saying, Lori.
That's a great example.
All right, let's go.
Yeah, go ahead.
Last word.
Last word is I think if those types of people are available, the school would welcome them.
Agreed.
They are available.
And I guarantee if we asked for volunteers, we'd have probably thousands.
Joe in Pittsburgh, thank you so much, Lori.
What's up, Joe?
How are you?
Sean, it's a pleasure.
Nice to talk to you.
What can I do for you, sir?
Nice to talk to you.
First of all, ALICE training is just you sit through a, pay $150, sit through a seminar, and then you're certified to go teach that training and buy the materials from the company that does ALICE training.
So you have someone who sits through an hour and a half about threat assessments and mitigating threats, and then they're supposed to go back to their schools and teach them.
That doesn't work.
What you need is a version of school security like Sasha and Malia had, and now Baron has.
Of course, the schools that the president's children go to are a much higher threat level.
So as other schools were, of course, looked at by security professionals, you mitigate the threats.
And then there are investments in good cameras that can monitor good cameras with the right software can monitor a door.
And if any pixel in that changes, it can alert someone.
You get a beep.
Yes, I'm a disabled American.
I volunteered with a veteran-owned company.
I'm not going to mention their name.
And they came out of the DOD space and have tried to help schools with their comprehensive security, an enterprise system, plugging in all their security assets and running it autonomously.
Listen, without giving a lot of details away, I have probably one of the most sophisticated home security systems you can ever have.
After a threat assessment and a security assessment, after, you know, over the years being in the public, it may shock you.
Some people don't like me a lot, and they've made it known they don't like me a lot.
So I know from firsthand experience what these guys can do and how good they are.
And the equipment is so inexpensive now.
I mean, to get cameras in your home, it's so, I mean, it is just doable for everybody.
The cost isn't the issue here.
The resolve, the desire to fix the problem and solve the problem.
And it's just, how many more times do we have to go down the same road?
It happens.
We have the same boring, typical talking points.
Nothing gets done.
How about this time we put real solutions in place?
And I'm saying to everybody, just transcend your political argument.
You're not going to change anybody's mind.
Abortion, guns, you're not going to change anybody's mind.
So let's put the security assessment, threat assessment, every school in the country, even nursery school, every school, and then go from there.
And then every school needs to have that comprehensive plan implemented.
I just don't believe that would not be an overwhelmingly successful program.
We can't compare ourselves to other countries because we say we're exceptional.
The reason I raise that is in this case, we are going to say we're an exceptional country.
If you look at other peer countries in places like Japan or Western Europe, they do not have the incidence of violence against children that we have in this country.
We cannot in education, in health, in death by guns, look in a mirror and say, actually, if we're going to be exceptional, we need to know we're going to improve.
Washington, if you match it against public opinion polls of their constituents, lawmakers in that city are failing American people every day.
Thank you so much, Brian.
And that, of course, is the question.
So much about American exceptionalism is wonderful.
How different we are from the rest of the world is wonderful.
The country of opportunity and true freedom.
And this part of the American exceptional story isn't so easy to sell to the rest of the world.
President Trump, there's been a theme in many of his remarks.
After that church shooting in Texas, President Trump said it would be a little too soon to talk about gun laws.
After the massacre in Las Vegas, he said, we'll be talking, quote, we will talk about gun laws as time goes on.
David, there has not been a very serious public policy conversation about gun control here at this administration in this White House.
The president tweeted today, no child, teacher, or anyone else should ever feel unsafe in an American school.
We will see if this is the one that forces that policy conversation.
Yet again, I mean, you just, you cannot have these conversations with at least saying every time we are the only nation that has this kind of violence and presumably gun violence, obviously, in particular, focused on our children.
It is just ridiculous.
My daughter is coming home from an urban high school in the next 20 minutes.
It's like no other country lives or allows themselves to live.
And here we are another time having a discussion about guns as being a security issue for our children.
I know.
I was just talking to a seven-year-old on my show this week who lost her six-year-old friend at a school shooting in South Carolina.
She wrote a letter to the president, and I couldn't have put it better.
You know, the seven-year-old said, Mr. President, how are you going to keep children safe in this country?
I have 10 nieces and nephews.
We're talking about bump stocks.
We're talking about legislation.
A child of God is dead.
Cannot we acknowledge in this country that we can't?
We cannot accept this.
I can't do it, Wolf.
I'm sucked.
We can't do it.
Cups.
All right.
We're going to get back to you, but you're obviously, this is so emotional.
Unfortunately, it happens all too often.
And as a result, people say we've got to learn some lessons.
Unfortunately, lessons are never, never learned.
This, according to Bill Bratton, the former NYPD commissioner, is yet another example of how this country seems to have this sick preoccupation with guns, and it manifests itself into these really terrible mass shootings.
This is a sickness that has infected the country.
Unchecked and unfettered gun violence.
But with every deadly shooting in this country, the odds get worse and worse and worse.
This is who we are right now.
But is this really who we want to be, a country where anybody at any time could be shot to death?
And then when a bunch of people are killed and lives are shattered, we are sad and maybe angry and then we forget and we move on until the next time.
All right, all the predictable arguments that we hear after every shooting.
And, you know, this is sadly, I mean, it happens literally within the hour before we even have the details of what happens coming in.
It just goes right there.
And it's going to end in the same predictable result.
You know, I've said this many times.
I've been in radio 30 years.
I've been on TV now.
This is my 23rd year.
In all these years, I don't think I've convinced anybody about my position on the Second Amendment.
It's not going to change, nor is it the answer.
So, okay, so let's think out of the box.
Putting those predictable debates aside, why shouldn't the debate in the country be, how do we keep, in this instance, our kids safe in school?
Do we have the ability to secure every school in America?
And I think the answer is yes.
And I think the answer is also would be tied into retired military, retired police officers, you know, fundamental security that we do every single day.
In every building that I walk into in New York, you have to be cleared.
You don't get to just, oh, let me run to the elevator.
It never happens.
And if anybody attempts to do so, it's a big deal.
And that's pretty much every building in New York.
That's a post-9-11 world, although many places had a lot of these systems in place even prior to 9-11.
You just don't get to walk into any office building in New York.
And it's secure and it works.
And I think at the end of the day, if we decide, just pick any one school wherever you happen to live.
And if we decide we're going to keep that school safe, absolutely it can be done.
Anyway, so I don't think the predictable arguments are productive, number one, nor do I think they apply, number two, nor do I think the facts bear out what everybody seems to say reflexively after something tragic like this happens.
Joe Eaton is with us, program director of Fasters.
I'm sorry, FasterSavesLives.org.
John Lott, he's the president of the Crime Prevention Research, More Guns, Less Crime, his best-selling book, multiple editions out there.
Welcome both of you to the program.
Look, John, I mean, every single shooting, this is where the media goes.
This is where people on the left go.
And it just, it becomes, you know, Groundhog Day all over again.
Nothing changes.
Nothing gets better.
I think there is an answer.
If we decide to secure a school, we can do it.
And we've got the manpower.
We have enough retired military police officers.
I'm sure would love jobs inside of schools.
And if you have the proper security measures put in place, I think this, a lot of this can be prevented.
Or at the very minimum, if something begins to happen, it could be minimized.
Does that make sense?
I mean, I agree with you.
Look, I'm very frustrated by this.
I've been making similar arguments since 1998.
And, you know, I listened to the politicians on TV yesterday coming out with different types of proposals like background checks on private transfers.
President Obama, after each of the mass public shootings that he's talked about, that was the one type of legislation he put forward.
I just wish during one of his press conferences, somebody would have asked him, Mr. President, can you point to one single mass public shooting that if this law had been in effect, it would have stopped?
Because at least any of the attacks during this century wouldn't have been stopped as a result of having that law in effect.
You know, you look at some of the other things.
I was listening to Senator Nelson from Florida talk about the terror watch list yesterday.
Well, you know, one, I think he completely mischaracterized what the debate was between the Republicans and the Democrats.
But beyond that, how is that relevant to this?
I think there's a simple thing that can be done, and that is allowing people in the schools to be able to go and protect themselves, to get rid of these gun-free zones.
The one thing that we see happen virtually every time, over 98% of these mass public shootings have occurred in places where we don't allow general citizens to be able to go and defend themselves.
You know, I'm not sure, though.
I mean, look, and I have no problem.
I've carried a weapon all of my adult life.
So, and I'm a big supporter of the Second Amendment.
I just am, and I'm not going to change my mind.
And I've looked at your book and the many editions of it, but I actually think the idea that teachers in a classroom are the answer, I'm not so sure.
I think it's got to be, I think it's got to be more systematic than that.
I think you've got to, we now have to say, if we really want to protect schools, these are the security measures that will work.
These doors must be closed.
People are outside the perimeter of schools.
Then you have people on the inside.
There's one entry point, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, those are basic fundamental things.
If we want to secure a White House, obviously, you know, you're going to have a lot more security.
But if we want to secure a school, I think we can do it.
Retired military, retired police.
Yeah, they're armed.
They can conceal it.
It's not like they have to walk around with machine guns or whatever.
And I just think everybody will have the peace of mind then that they know that they have a front line of defense right there on the ground.
Look, I mean, I believe that having a few staff or a couple teachers someplace who are unknown to the attacker would dramatically alter the equations that we're talking about in terms of their incentives to go and do the attack.
No, I'm not against it.
All right, Joe.
Go ahead.
No, I understood.
But what I would say is, so much of this discussion is about having kind of uniformed guards or armed guards or people that are identified as providing the protection there.
If you had somebody who is ex-military, you know, law enforcement there and he wasn't a teacher and the students realized that he was there in order to do the guarding, that dramatically reduces his effectiveness.
I'm talking about, though, John, a full comprehensive security assessment.
Right.
And a full comprehensive, that would mean, okay, where are the areas of vulnerability?
How does somebody that shouldn't be on the property get on the property?
That would mean that, you know, kids have, like, for example, I have ideas to get into the buildings that I get into.
And that, you know, over time, that very quickly in the course of a year, they're going to know who belongs in that school, who doesn't belong in that school.
I can even tell you as a parent going to school sometimes, I have to sign in.
I have to show my license.
I mean, and I'm not against it at all.
I don't think it's just, it's not any different if we really want to stop it.
I think there's a solution.
Joe, let me bring you into this equation.
Do you like any of these ideas and tell us specifically what you work on?
Well, I can certainly say I agree with just about everything that both you and Mr. Lott have said, and actually with quite a bit, even the absurd comments that you ran in the promo.
And that's exactly what the Faster Saves Lives program has been doing: giving schools an option with the realities they deal with today.
I think all of us can agree we would love to wake up tomorrow in a world where we don't have to worry about violence impacting our families or our communities.
But the reality is every day these school administrators have to wake up wondering if violence is going to be a part of their school that day.
And a lot of these schools are realizing that they have the ability to change the outcome of these scenarios.
Looking at everything that has happened, our foundation has been providing this training to schools for over five years now.
We've worked with over 1,300 school staff from 225 different districts across, I think it's 12 states at this point.
And what we do is provide them, number one, the ability when this violence occurs in their school is to first stop the killing as soon as possible.
And then secondly, start the medical aid as soon as possible.
And then when the professionals show up, they actually have live, viable patients they can transfer to them instead of victims that we see in so many of these situations.
To the extent, what about the first step?
As the first step, doesn't it have to be a comprehensive security assessment of every school?
You're exactly right.
And what I find is by the time a school staff looks at the option of having firearms as part of their safety plan, either with armed school resource officers or other armed staff in the building, these schools already have layer upon layer upon layer of protection in the schools.
And if a threat is internal to their schools, such as from one of their students, there's a lot of good they can do with setting up tip lines, with monitoring social media, with having a good relationship.
By the way, that all happened here.
Every sign, every bit of evidence that we ever needed, you know, if you quote everybody, I know I'll use the quote, they joked that he'd shoot up the school.
Well, it's not, it wasn't a joke and it's not a joke.
Everybody knew.
You know, this kid was thrown out of school.
The FBI was told about this kid.
He wants to be known as a school shooter.
So in other words, we had the signs and nobody seemed to follow up is the problem here.
But stay right there.
We'll take a break.
We'll come back.
All right, as we continue, Sean Hannity Show 800-941 Sean, if you want to be a part of this extravaganza.
Anyway, Joe Eaton is with us, program director.
Faster saveslives.org is his website.
John Lott, the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and also the author of More Guns, Less Crime.
And a lot of people here that go, this is outrageous.
You went and looked at this on a statistical basis that those cities, those towns, those countries that have the most severe, the toughest gun control laws, it doesn't work.
So then why does everybody always race to a solution that you can prove doesn't work?
Well, I think a lot of what happens is that people, you know, get affected by the news coverage here.
They hear about bad things that happen with guns.
They rarely hear about the benefits.
And so it affects their perceptions about the costs and benefits of people having guns to own.
And I think, you know, you look at these mass public shootings, my guess is the entire debate that we have right now would be dramatically different if the media just reported a few things a little bit differently.
If they mentioned once in a while that another attack occurred in a place where general citizens were banned from having guns.
At some point, they would realize, geez, it seems like almost every time this is happening, 98% of these attacks are occurring in places where people aren't able to go and defend themselves.
Yeah, I mean, that is a big problem.
And I always ask everybody, and Joe, this goes back to maybe the program that you're doing here.
But if you're in any administrative building, here's a question that I think is very simple.
And God forbid you are in a situation where there's an active shooter.
Would you prefer to have trained, retired military that are armed there, trained retired police that are armed there, at least offering some help, some assistance, some line of defense?
And for me, I think, you know, regardless of where you stand on the gun issue, I got to believe the answer would be yes.
You're right.
And that's what we see.
We can all agree that if there are going to be guns in the schools, they cannot be in the hands of criminals or untrained people.
And that's what the Faster Saves Lives program does: give the school staff who are in the school buildings this training.
What we see in every situation is every time one of these events happens, there are certain staff, and they're in every school building in the United States.
When a killer comes into that building, they're going to go willingly stand between these murderers and these innocent kids.
And they're going to give up their life to buy these kids a few extra seconds of life.
As a school and as a community, as a nation, if you have staff that are willing to go stand between these murderers and these kids, we owe it to them to say, you're going there anyway.
Show up with any tool or any training you're comfortable with so you have some chance of going home to your family at the end of the night.
And that's what the Faster Saves Lives program helps schools do.
They identify the staff, we train them to a level higher than what we require our law enforcement to be trained to.
Yeah, just to me is common sense, and that is comprehensive security assessments.
Everybody, all hands on deck.
And we do have professionals that are.
Look at this coach that was shot and killed protecting his students.
Unbelievable.
Unbelievable heroism.
All right.
Thank you both for being with us.
Appreciate your insight, your input.
800-941, Sean, if you want to be a part of the program.
We'll shift gears a little bit in the bottom half hour.
We'll check in with Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan.
This immigration bill that's being pushed is a disaster straight ahead.
It's very important to me with respect to the budget: DACA.
I did not want DACA in the budget.
I wanted DACA separate so that we could talk about it and make a deal.
And I hope to be able to make a deal.
I hope the Democrats are not going to use it just as a campaign.
You know, they've been talking about DACA for many years and they haven't produced.
We started talking about DACA, and I think we'll produce.
But if the Democrats want to make a deal, it's really up to them because we want really tremendous border security, but we have to have Democrat support for DACA.
And they are starting that process today.
We didn't want to have it in the big budget because if we have it in the big budget, it's going to get mixed up with all of the other things.
So now we have our military taken care of, and now we start very serious DACA talks today.
And we are, I can tell you, speaking for the Republican Party, we would love to do DACA.
We would love to get it done.
We want border security and the other elements that you know about chain migration, you know about the Visa lottery, you know about.
But we think there's a good chance of getting DACA done if the Democrats are serious and they actually want to do it.
All right, 25 to the top of the hour, 800-941, Sean.
That was the president talking about the ongoing battle right now in the U.S. Senate over the immigration bill.
He said, I'm asking all senators and both parties to support the Grassley bill and to oppose any legislation that fails to fulfill these four pillars that he talked about during his State of the Union address, including opposing any short-term band-aid approach.
He said the overwhelming majority of American voters support a plan that fulfills the framework's four pillars, which moves us toward the safe, modern, and lawful immigration system that people deserve.
Now, this is the bill that was put out by Senator Chuck Grassley.
It pretty much talks about it does give on DACA for about 1.8 million illegal immigrants and 25 million for border security.
I assume that's being paid up front, or else I wouldn't do any deal that doesn't give you the money up front to build the wall, to end the diversity visa lottery, and phase out J migration.
The bill that seems to be getting the most traction is this so-called middle-of-the-road bill.
But when you have Jeff Flake and Susan Collins authoring this thing, I guarantee you it's not going to be anything like what the president wants.
As a matter of fact, we already know it doesn't look like what the president wants.
Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, Ohio, North Carolina, Freedom Caucus members, welcome both of you back to the program.
Great to be with you, Sean.
Thanks so much.
Where are both of you on the Grassley bill?
Although, obviously, the Collins bill and this whatever group of people seem to be pushing more towards an amnesty bill and not the president's priorities.
That's what we're calling it, Sean.
This is Jim here.
We're calling it the Amnesty Aid Bill, right?
You've got eight Republicans, eight Democrats in the Senate, and that's just an amnesty bill, not in any way consistent with what the President has talked about and what the American people demanded when they put us all in power in office in the 2016 election.
So the best bill is the Goodlatt bill.
The second best one is the Grassley bill, but the one that needs to pass in the House is Chairman Goodlatt's bill because it does all the things the President talked about plus Sanctuary City, plus e-Verify, plus Kate's Law, all those things that make sense.
Those are elements that are contained in Chairman Goodlatt's legislation.
And what do you think, Congressman Meadows?
You know, I'm looking at this and I'm like, we go back to the same thing every time, and that's capitulating to the Democrats on every single bill.
I don't think the Democrats want a bill.
I think that at least up to now, now that the polls have been changing, the president's popularity is now at a high.
You look at the generic ballot numbers, they have moved very heavily in the Republican direction.
I think certainly the economic bill passed at the end of the year had a big, the tax bill had a big part to play in it.
And I think actually, if this comes down to a debate, the winning issue is securing the borders and securing them first.
Well, it is.
And this is an issue that obviously the president defined himself different than all the candidates that he ran against.
And the American people spoke in November.
They said, what we want is someone who will actually address this problem.
The president has been consistent with that.
And yet we see over in the Senate right now this whole debate with a few moderate Republicans teaming up with the Democrats, trying to support a bill that honestly the president didn't campaign on, Jim Jordan and I didn't campaign on.
And I'm pleased to hear that the White House has offered a veto threat if that happens to get out of the Senate.
Bravo, I applaud the President for doing that.
But I can tell you that my good friend Jim Jordan is right.
We need to put forth the most conservative bill out of the House.
Let that set the debate.
And if we do that, I think that we'll get a bill that supports the four pillars that the president has outlined.
Okay.
What about there are a lot of people.
We always get the tax increase, the spending increase, and we never get the spending cuts.
That's always 10 years down the line, and it never happens.
You always get the amnesty going back to 86, 96, 2006.
You always get some type of concession for people that didn't respect our laws and sovereignty, but you never end up getting the walls built and the border secure.
How do we ensure that, regardless of how this all turns out, that that wall gets built?
I think, number one, it's good for the country and it makes sense for the country.
And number two, it's good politically because it'll be the first time we ever got done what we said we were going to get done.
Yeah, Sean, you're exactly right.
The American people are not going to tolerate that once again.
They won't buy that whole line.
Oh, we'll do the amnesty now, but we promise, promise, promise we'll eventually get to border security that is not going to fly.
And the one person they trust on this issue is the President of the United States.
So that's why I mentioned Chairman Goodlatt's legislation, Sean, because it does it in the prioritizing way that the American people know it has to get done and the way you've talked about it getting done, which is border security wall first to end chain migration, get rid of this crazy sanctuary city policy, deal with Kate's law, get rid of the visa lottery, all those.
That legislation has like 22 different key policy areas.
The first 21 are everything that is common sense and the American people spoke loudly and clearly about.
And then the last one says, and oh, by the way, we're also going to address the DACA situation.
That's done in a prioritizing fashion and manner that is consistent with what we were elected to do.
So that's why Mark and I have, for the last several weeks, we've been pushing the Goodlatt legislation.
We've tried to ramp up the talk about that because that's the one that we need to get done.
And as Mark said, where is the leadership on this, though?
Where is Paul Ryan?
They finally whipped it.
They finally whipped it.
But let's hope they put the full strength of the leadership behind the whip and start persuading people this is the right thing to put down first because it's consistent with the American people to believe.
Why would you let Susan Collins and a bill with Senator Flake go through with only Democrats and say somehow this is what we're going to pass on?
Their plan is: okay, they're going to pass DACA.
They're going to provide $25 billion, they say, for border security, but we'll only give you $2.5 billion.
This is over 10 years.
That sounds to me like John McCain's proposal.
Well, let's study it in the year 2020.
Well, that's just a way of punting the problem down the road like they always do.
That's the same old Washington swamp.
Well, it is the same old swamp.
And if you want to make sure that the Republican Party is in the minority, come this November in the House and that we lose seats in the Senate, let's just continue down that road.
You know, Jim Jordan says it best.
He says it never hurts to do what you promised the American people you would do.
We said that we were going to be tough on immigration, making sure that we have a secure border, making sure sanctuary cities and the like are dealt with.
And if we don't do that, you know, people are going to either show up or not show up in November, but it will not be good news for anybody in our party.
And so that's why we've got to address this and make sure that we actually build a wall, that we don't talk about it, that we actually make sure that we address this and don't provide amnesty without fixing the root cause of the problem.
You know, I'm looking at, and this was an article on one of the blogs I saw earlier today that if you look at the latest numbers, that Republicans are doing a lot better generically on the ballot, and the president's doing very well on a number of polls, better than he has done.
And I would attribute a lot of it to the economic fallout now that people are seeing their taxes cut fairly significantly on a weekly basis starting in February.
I think they're beginning to get the message that, oh, wait a minute, I think I've been paying way too much in taxes.
This is one of the main reasons he won the election.
So why isn't the Republican leadership in both the House and Senate just embracing anything?
You're so right, Sean.
The reason the numbers are up is because the tax bill is something we said we would do, and we did it, and people are feeling the impact of that right now.
The president said he's going to put Neil Gorsuch on the court, a good conservative on the court, and he did it.
The president has said he's going to make ISIS backpedale, and they're doing it.
The president said he was going to put the embassy in Jerusalem, and he's doing it.
So when the president, that's what the American people love about this president, is he does what he says, and here we come to immigration.
And if we can just help the president do what he said he was going to do, his numbers will go even higher.
How many people, when you talk to him, remember when Nikki Haley said, if you don't start voting with us at the United Nations, we're going to remember that.
The American people love that because it's the respect and focus that there should be at places like that.
So that's what they appreciate so much about this president.
And if we can do that on immigration, that will be so good for his approval rating, but more importantly, be good for the country.
Both of you have been following the stories involving the abuse of FISA, and we have new information today.
This was put out by the Daily Caller that Bruce Orr actually hid his wife's fusion GPS payments.
His wife, Nellie, actually did some of the op research for the phony fake Russian dossier that Hillary bought and paid for.
And that, in and of itself, that omission can be a crime.
What are your thoughts on that?
Well, you know, Sean, you've been covering this when no one else would cover it, and everybody was criticizing you for bringing this to the attention of the American voter.
And yet now you've been vindicated.
Here we are seeing that Bruce Orr, who actually worked for the Department of Justice, his wife was employed by the very group that was doing the opposition research, and yet they didn't disclose that.
Not only did they not disclose it to the FISA court, but now we're finding out that they didn't disclose it in terms of ethics forms.
You know, there's collusion going on, and that collusion is not between the president and the Russians.
It's between the Democrat Party, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and really the whole narrative of the deep state trying to make sure that they influenced an election.
Got to take a break.
More with Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows on the other side of this.
As we continue with Freedom Caucus members, their chairman is Mark Meadows.
He's from North Carolina, former chairman.
He got dismissed from the job.
He was actually laid off and fired.
Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Do you guys have term limits on this?
How did that work out?
There are term limits.
Both of us are.
Was there a coup somehow in there?
Mark Meadows taking out as his wrestling buddy, Jim Jordan?
I don't know what happened.
And listen, I would end up pinned on every single time going up against the gentleman from the street.
No, no, he's tough.
Good thing that I know martial arts.
I could hurt him.
But besides that, look, we had this terrible, terrible school shooting, another tragedy.
We've had a lot of them.
And I'm watching, and I almost, I get a headache watching the same predictable arguments and discussions going on.
I'm not interested in these predictable talking points anymore.
And to me, I think there's an answer, and that is every single school in the country should have a comprehensive security assessment.
After that assessment, a plan has got to be organized.
And that means securing the perimeter of these schools, and that would mean hiring former military, retired military, retired police.
Yeah, they're going to be armed.
Yes, it can be concealed.
But there is a way to safeen the environment in these schools and prevent some of these tragedies and at least minimize them if, God forbid, they break out.
Agree or disagree, Congressman Jordan?
Yeah, I think you're right, Sean.
You know, so many churches now are doing the same thing.
They have a plan in place, and they have some of their parishioners who have their concealed carry license are actually coming to church with their, you know, armed, but obviously concealed as a way to hopefully, if something terrible like this ever happens at those locations, they're better equipped to deal with it.
I think you're right.
We may have to step this up and figure out the safest possible way to deal with evil when it raises its ugly head, like we saw again yesterday in Florida.
Yeah, Congressman Meadows?
Yeah, I think the other interesting aspect is when we look and we talk to law enforcement officers, they understand how to secure our schools.
And basically, it's a resource issue.
School resource officers, metal detectors and the like.
Obviously, we want to make sure that anybody who goes to school can do so in a safe environment.
And so I think that you'll see additional legislation coming from this administration that says, let's make sure that we have enough resources to protect those students that go to default to the normal talking points on both the Democrat and Republican side of things is not appropriate.
But I agree with you.
Let's do a real assessment, Sean, and make sure that we can provide a safe environment for our students.
Now, one of the things that everybody said, well, we can't afford this.
I said we can't afford not to at this point.
And I really believe that people have served their whole lives and they're in retirement.
And I know I have friends of mine that have retired five weeks later.
I'm so bored.
I can't take it anymore.
And people that have served their whole life would probably look at it as an opportunity and a challenge.
And they'd have a desire.
They'd feel an important role that they're playing in keeping the local school system safe.
I guarantee you they'd be lining up to do these jobs.
I want you to be lining up to do the jobs.
And I think the other part of that is, you know, we just passed a budget that Jim and I were just very troubled by the numbers.
But we did $131 billion as billion with a B. Why not take a lion's share of that money and let's start looking at our school resource officers.
If we're going to do something, instead of growing the size of government here in Washington, D.C., let's look at reallocating some of those dollars and making sure it goes back to our states and local counties to provide additional resources for those schools.
Let's make sure that there's some kind of return.
Yeah, I got to let you both go.
I'm not cutting you short here, but Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows, two of the people that really are fighting for the conservative values in this country, if not for the Freedom Caucus, it would be a thousand times worse than it is for the country and the president right now.
Thank you both for what you do.
We appreciate it.
800-941 Sean is our toll-free telephone number.
We'll take a quick break.
We'll come back.
We'll continue.
All right, news rounds up information overload hour, Sean Hannity show 800-941 Sean.
I want to play, this is from the son from earlier today.
This is the guy that said he alerted the FBI to this YouTube comment about this shooter, Nicholas Cruz, that he wanted to be known as a professional school shooter.
That was literally posted on YouTube.
He told the FBI, the FBI came to visit him the day after he alerted the FBI about all this.
And then we're going to play the FBI agent saying in 2017, yeah, they had information about this comment.
Listen to this.
September 24th, 2017, I sent a screenshot of a comment on one of my videos.
Now, people keep asking me which video was it.
I don't know.
I don't remember what video it was.
When I saw the comment come through on my studio app on my iPhone, I screenshotted the comment.
I hit the report button, reported it to YouTube.
Of course, they removed the comment.
And then I tried to email it to the FBI.
I found an email address, tips at FBI.gov, sent it to that email address.
I immediately got back a domain error.
Basically, that email address didn't exist.
So I looked up the number for our local field office and I called and I left a message.
Well, the next day, I had two FBI agents standing in my office taking down the information, taking copies of the screenshot and asking me questions that, of course, I couldn't answer.
You know, all it was in my channel was a comment.
You know, people leave pretty heinous comments on a pretty regular basis on this channel.
And I really didn't think anything of it.
But what I did think was, you know, this comment said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
And I knew that I couldn't just ignore that.
In 2017, the FBI received information about a comment made on a YouTube channel.
The comment simply said, I'm going to be a professional school shooter.
No other information was included with that comment, which would indicate a time, location, or the true identity of the person who made the comment.
The FBI conducted database reviews, checks, but was unable to further identify the person who actually made the comment.
Again, as a native South Floridian, my heart goes out to the victims, the families, and friends, and the entire community.
Thank you.
If I've heard one time in the last 24 hours, I've heard it a thousand.
If you see something, say something.
Okay, the guy saw something, reported it to the FBI, did all of the right things.
And apparently it was widely known in the school that this kid was the kid.
And then, of course, we have all the social media fingerprints of this guy, Nicholas Cruz.
All the evidence that we needed that this was the guy that would probably do something like this was there.
People were speaking out.
People knew it.
People said it.
Now the question is, how did we miss it?
Because they missed it.
And I'm not blaming any one individual.
I go back to what I've been saying all day, that every school in this country at this point, all of these predictable talking points are meaningless to all of us.
The priority, this isn't a gun debate at this point.
This is a security debate.
And if we want to secure every school in America, there's nobody that's going to be able to convince me we can't do it.
It's really a matter of a comprehensive security assessment of every school in the country and then implementing it with retired military and retired police.
If we really want to keep our kids safe, they would be the front line of defense.
Now, you say, okay, well, Sean, they had a security guard at the school.
The school had multiple buildings and 3,200 kids.
That's not enough security.
That's not what I'm talking about.
Geraldo Rivera, my friend and colleague from Fox News, joins us.
And Jonathan Gillum, former Navy, well, you're never a former Navy SEAL, Navy SEAL and Air Marshal and all-around good guy.
He's with us as well.
Geraldo, a lot of people got pretty pissed off at you on the show last night because you started talking about guns.
I don't think the guns are the issue here.
I think if we want to secure any building in this country, we have the ability to do it.
And let's do it.
The president agreed, obviously, Sean.
His remarks were totally, I think, in keeping with the spirit of what you said last night.
And I just want to remind you, my dear brother, and the audience, that I agreed with you on that page.
You did, you did.
But there are hundreds of thousands of AR-15 type military-style assault weapons out there.
And let's say 1% of the people that own them are freaks.
1%.
There's 1% freaks in any group of Boy Scouts, of nuns.
You pick a group.
There's 1% of crazy people.
So there are a lot of weapons that can do damage.
You had 30 some odd people killed with handguns at another school shooting because the guy had multiple handguns.
Ultimately, the only way that argument's going to work, let's say you get rid of AR-15s.
All right, then the next shooting is with the guy that has five handguns and is quick at reloading them.
And then the next shooting is another type of guy.
I don't buy that argument just because I've been around the military too often and Jonathan fall more than me.
You know, there's a reason they've developed the weapon as nifty, as handy, as easy to reload as the AR-15.
It's not for shooting ducks, as I said last night.
I don't care that people get angry at me.
That's not my thing.
I would not have lasted in this business all these decades if I cared about people getting mad at me or not.
But I like your idea, and I have advocated your idea.
There should be one good guy with a gun at every place where there are school children, and the school should be as safe as places where we keep our military.
I think it could be made totally safe.
I mean, if you do a complete, thorough, comprehensive security assessment on every individual school, and then the threat assessment comes back, how many people do you need, retired police, military, that are armed, you know, in each building, surround the perimeter, make sure there's no, nobody gets in that building that doesn't belong in that building.
We all live in New York.
There's not a building in New York you can get into, Jonathan Gillum, that you don't have either an ID to get in for or a pass from somebody that's in the building allowing you up.
No, it's absolutely right.
And, you know, I watched your show last night.
I want to tell Geraldo that I appreciate his passion.
I really do.
And I've seen some fake passion on some other networks.
It was just ridiculous.
He's the real deal.
That's why we love him.
And I understand what he's saying here.
Here's what I want Geraldo to understand: you know, he's been around the military enough to get this.
So a military base, a federal building, you can't just go into those buildings with an AR-15.
In fact, if you try to approach those facilities, you're going to probably be shot or you'll be taken down pretty quick if you show an aggressive move.
That's because they have had comprehensive threat assessments.
They know the most likely locations that people will enter and exit.
We just had it at the NSA earlier this week where it worked effectively.
And ultimately, Columbine was done with a, it was not done with an AR-15.
They had kind of a mock-up semi-automatic weapon and a shotgun.
And so it doesn't really matter the style of gun.
A mass killing can be done.
It could be done with a knife.
What we have to do is start looking at this from, as Sean is saying, as we said on the show yesterday, a security standpoint.
But herein lies the problem with that: is that when soon as politics get involved and law enforcement gets involved, what they start doing is they go overboard with these assessments and they go into high-budget areas when you don't need that.
You don't need that at all.
And I talked about the book that Sean wrote, the Forward 4 that I wrote, Sheep No More, and it teaches people how to think like an attacker and how to do a threat assessment on their life.
This can be done by the school administrators, by the staff, and by the parents, by the local law enforcement.
You don't need experts to come in.
You just determine this is the type of attack that could happen.
This is the avenue of approach.
And then you get with the fire marshal.
You lock as many of the doors from the outside as you can.
You won't be able to lock them all.
And then that is where you determine the funnel is that these bad guys can come in.
And that's where you go and you get these former, not just necessarily retired, but former law enforcement veterans that can qualify with a weapon and come out there and they can sit a post.
And then you will know if anybody approaches, they will not be able to get in that building.
That is ultimately the thing that you want to stop.
It doesn't matter with the gun.
You know, Geraldo, let me go to what Jonathan's point is.
And I forget the exact words you used last night.
You called it a national emergency.
I'm not disagreeing, but if we look at what's happened on television, you know, almost in the immediate aftermath of this, the same predictable talking points.
Look, I'm on radio 30 years, Geraldo.
I've carried a firearm more than half my adult life, more than half my life.
I've been trained in the use of firearms since I'm 11.
And you're never going to convince me on the gun side.
I'm never going to convince you either.
But if we do a comprehensive security threat assessment of every school and we get the manpower that's necessary, we implement the changes.
Number one, we minimize the ability of these people to get in.
And number two, if it happens, we've got first responders right there on the ground with the capacity to defend.
And I think it makes it a whole lot, it changes the entire equation.
We have a program, No Child Left Behind.
We should now start a program in the spirit of what you and Jonathan have just been saying and what the president said in his, I thought, heartfelt remarks.
You have a program where individual school districts can apply to a federal grant to secure their school.
Now, some schools have more highly evolved security systems.
They have higher budgets.
Some schools are, you know, they're lucky if they have textbooks with covers on them.
But with this federal grant money, where you're not federalizing the problem particularly, you're not creating a new bureaucracy, but you have a program where any school can, and as Jonathan says, in conjunction with the fire marshal, because you don't want the next tragedy to be the kids in science couldn't get out because the door was chained from the outside to prevent intruders.
So there is some level of complication, but you don't need a 300-page memo on it.
Use common sense.
I agree with you.
Just think of children as our most valuable resource.
We always say that.
Politicians always BS about that.
Before we get off this topic, I just want to, one quick PS.
You know Bernie Carrick, former police commissioner, New York City.
Bernie Carrick wrote an excellent article on a Newsmax, I think it is today, where he posits, is the FBI too concerned about political investigations that the agents aren't following up on the kind of tips and clues and leads that you recited at the top of this segment, John.
Oh, we had Bernie on the program yesterday, and I thought he was amazing.
All right, we'll take a break here.
We'll come back.
We'll continue more with Geraldo and Jonathan Gillum.
Don't forget Hannity tonight, 9 Eastern, the very latest on this and much more on the Fox News channel.
All right, as we continue, Geraldo Rivera and Jonathan Gillum are with us.
Look, there's a way to do this.
I'll tell you one way not to do it, though, and that is if we do it the way that we've been doing it.
Same predictable arguments.
They go by the wayside.
Nothing happens.
You know, I just think.
I know you say that, but I just, I don't know why our nation needs, why do we need a million AR-15s?
I mean, you know why?
I remember, you know, I've been around guns forever.
I love guns.
Guns, you know, guns, whether you're a hunter or you think you're Lawrence of Arabia, whatever it is.
But I bet you many of the people who own AR-15 type weapons own them because they think they have lack of faith in the central government.
The black helicopters coming to tick your weapons.
The Second Amendment's going to be a race.
A lot of it is paranoia.
And I just want to.
It's not which.
Do you see how many?
How would you call it paranoia?
How do you call it paranoia?
Just look at the terms.
What do you do with an AR-15?
Hang on, just look at it.
I've owned AR-15s.
You know, a lot of times nobody even knows what an AR-15 means.
You know, the difference between an AR-15 and another rifle is often just cosmetic.
It's just words to most people.
And I'm telling you that just look at the average weekend statistics of carnage in Chicago.
Are you telling me we've cleaned up New York under Rudy Giuliani?
We couldn't clean up Chicago.
And if we put our minds to it, I believe we could.
And I don't think.
Go ahead.
You're right.
We're not going to solve this argument.
Listen, 30 years in radio.
I'm not going to change anybody's mind.
I'm not going to.
And I'm not going to change your mind.
You're not going to change mine.
I believe in the Constitution, the Second Amendment.
And because some people abuse their freedoms, should not impact the right of other people's freedoms, in my opinion.
And it's also a very evil, dangerous world.
And I always ask everybody, well, what are you going to do if somebody breaks into your house?
I know what you're going to do, Geraldo.
You're going to grab a gun.
I'm going to grab a shotgun, which I have, which is far more intimidating.
But the only thing, here's my last words.
You better hope there's fewer than two people there.
Well, it's a Rossi Overland two-shot.
And if it takes more than two shots, then Jonathan will tell you, then you're screwed anyway.
But I want getting a powerful weapon like that to be at least as hard as getting a commercial driver's license for a semi-truck.
If you can have the test to get a semi-rig license, then you could have, that's how hard I want it to be to get a powerful weapon.
We'll give Jonathan the last word.
We've got to move on.
Thank you, Raldo wants it.
You want a gun?
You have to be able to drive an 18-wheeler.
Okay.
You know, I think, listen, again, this is like not the world that we live in.
We have to look at reality.
We're not going to get rid of the guns.
You could take away all the legal guns.
You could make it much harder.
There will always be bad guys with guns, always.
And so it's best if we start asking the right questions, if we start looking at security, and if we can eliminate the ability of these people to get into the schools, there won't be these mass shootings.
And then we can have a discussion later on.
And you'll see that the reality about these weapons is that there's very few people that have them that are doing bad things.
We're just allowing them to get into places where they can do a lot of harm, and that needs to stop.
All right.
I want to thank you both for being with us, 800-941.
Sean is a tofret telephone number.
The president's very touching comments.
Some of the other sounds from yesterday.
Sean Hannity is on.
All right, as I promised earlier, the president gave an address, unbelievable, emotional, and passionate address at the White House today.
We also have witness accounts and Sheriff Israel of Broward County and a lot of the sounds from this attack, and we put this together for you.
This can be solved, this problem.
Help us solve the problem.
Holy God.
He's by the entrance to Westglades on the west side of the school.
Florida, he's being notified.
Gary, does he know where the shooter is?
We don't know if I'm going to float any of the buildings in front of the 13 building.
Building 13.
17 kilo form myself render.
Stephanie comes from.
He's detained.
We have to suspect detained.
104.
Can we get a positive confirmation on Nicholas Cruz being detained?
Stephanie.
Uniform 134, confirm Nicholas Cruz is in custody.
He's hands.
Put your hands in the streets.
Please, man, please.
Put your phones away.
Put your phones away.
I heard a lot of gunshots, and then right after, when the police let us out, there was dead bodies everywhere.
Like there was two there.
And then when I kept walking down, there was more.
It was just scary.
We were just in class waiting, like doing notes and talking about our projects, and the fire alarm goes for the second time in the same day, which is weird.
So we all just go out to the field like we're supposed to.
And then I hear like gunshots.
You can tell.
And then you just get it.
Definitely gunshots.
Usually, whenever a fire alarm goes off, it's usually just like culinary and accident or nothing.
But it was really odd to have two fire alarms in one deadline.
It was the end of the school day, and the fire alarm went off.
And we went to evacuate, you know, as I said, it was a fire drill.
And then we got maybe 15, 20 steps out of the classroom.
And we were told that we were on cold red.
We ran back inside to the classroom and got them crushed down on the floor.
And then we moved into the closet.
A friend of mine teaches on the front in the freshman building, and she says that as she was leaving, that there were bodies on the floor.
So I don't know who it is, and I don't know why, but I mean, this is the type of situation that we just had a training about this, you know, not maybe like six weeks ago about how to deal with the situation.
If we hadn't had that training, it could have been, you know, a lot worse.
In fact, a lot of us probably thought that this was the drill that we were supposed to have, you know, this semester to practice.
And it wasn't.
It was a real thing.
I managed to put 19 kids in the closet with me.
How long did you have to be there?
Less than a minute.
Help us in a minute, and then you were cleared pretty quickly.
No, we were in the closet for probably 40 minutes.
Oh, 40 minutes.
Like, we were locked in the closet until SWAT came and got us and took us somewhere else and then took us somewhere else.
And now we're, you know, standing out on the street, and kids are, you know, finding their parents.
Wow, that certainly paints a picture.
So, you just heard an interview with a teacher who said that they just trained for this six weeks ago when this mass shooting happened a few hours ago.
She said she put numerous students in a closet and waited there for 40 minutes.
For like 30 minutes, we were just like praying and crying, and then the police came and we just got out.
I was praying to God, thinking that He could save us all from that.
We could make it out.
I called my parents at the moment.
It was just all crazy, and like all you could think about is, oh my god, my family, my friends, everything.
Like, you never think it would happen to you, but it does.
Kids were freaking out.
Some kids froze, some kids were on their phones.
A lot of were on their phones just trying to Snapchat everything because they thought it was a joke and it wasn't.
There's kids freaking out, students freaking out teachers.
It was sucked.
I was sitting in class, the bottom floor of the freshman building, and all we heard was gunshots.
Heard 15 rounds shoot the ceiling.
We all dove to the left side where the windows were.
Our teacher told us to get to the side closest to the door, so we all ran behind the desk.
The shooter, the good thing the door was locked, the shooter shot through the door, poked in, saw a couple people next to me.
I was sitting right behind a cabinet, and the bullet passed my ear, got a girl next to me.
We couldn't help anybody in the time because we had to stay quiet.
Megan Hill, Megan, thank you for taking the time to join us.
You're a junior, as I understand it.
You're in a room.
This door is locked.
This guy's shooting.
Take it from there.
What happened from there, Megan?
As the shooter was in the hallway, I'm not sure if I was the first room.
He shot through the glass window, did not open our door, and he turned the gun towards the side of the wall where the students were sitting.
He shot four people.
One was dead.
There are three other injured.
A girl was shot in her ribs.
A girl, a bullet clipped the top of her kneecap.
I was told to stay calm.
All I wanted to do was help, but I knew I put everybody else's life in jeopardy.
After 10 minutes, I finally couldn't stand anymore.
I took off my jean jacket.
I threw it over the desk and had someone try to help the girl in front of me.
I'm not sure if she would have hold that zeal jacket, but I tried my hardest.
Everyone was trying to stay calm.
I finally got a hold of my sister, Mackenzie.
She was on the second-floor bathroom, got into a door safely.
And the teacher, they're not allowed to open the door for a policy on code red, but he luckily didn't.
He saved her.
She was put into a room and survived.
And it was very traumatizing.
We were told to leave the building.
They told us the one out left, which was heads down and run straight to Pine Island.
There were bodies on the floor.
We had a deputy sheriff whose son was shot tonight, shot in the arm.
He's at one of the local area hospitals.
I'm being told he's being treated with non-life-threatening injuries.
Thank God.
If you are on a website and you know something or you've seen something, you see a person with rifles and weaponry and you see something that's not right, you owe it to your family, you owe it to your community, and you owe it to law enforcement to make this a safer nation by calling up someone tonight.
Call up the FBI, call up the Broward Sheriff's Office, call up someone tonight and let them know that you have information of something's not right.
You can prevent a major tragedy like this devastation that happened in Parkland.
Yesterday, a school filled with innocent children and caring teachers became the scene of terrible violence, hatred, and evil.
Around 2.30 yesterday afternoon, police responded to reports of gunfire at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
a great and safe community.
There, a shooter who is now in custody opened fire on defenseless students and teachers.
He murdered 17 people and badly wounded at least 14 others.
Our entire nation, with one heavy heart, is praying for the victims and their families.
To every parent, teacher, and child who is hurting so badly, we are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do to ease your pain.
We are all joined together as one American family, and your suffering is our burden also.
No child, no teacher should ever be in danger in an American school.
No parent should ever have to fear for their sons and daughters when they kiss them goodbye in the morning.
Each person who was stolen from us yesterday had a full life ahead of them, a life filled with wondrous beauty and unlimited potential and promise.
Each one had dreams to pursue, love to give, and talents to share with the world.
And each one had a family to whom they meant everything in the world.
Today we mourn for all of those who lost their lives.
We comfort the grieving and the wounded.
And we hurt for the entire community of Parkland, Florida that is now in shock and pain and searching for answers.
To law enforcement, first responders, and teachers who responded so bravely in the face of danger, we thank you for your courage.
Soon after the shooting, I spoke with Governor Scott to convey our deepest sympathies to the people of Florida and our determination to assist in any way that we can.
I also spoke with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi and Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel.
I'm making plans to visit Parkland, to meet with families and local officials, and to continue coordinating the federal response in these moments of heartache and darkness.
We hold on to God's word in Scripture.
I have heard your prayer and seen your tears.
I will heal you.
We trust in that promise and we hold fast to our fellow Americans in their time of sorrow.
I want to speak now directly to America's children, especially those who feel lost, alone, confused, or even scared.
I want you to know that you are never alone and you never will be.
You have people who care about you, who love you, and who will do anything at all to protect you.
If you need help, turn to a teacher, a family member, a local police officer, or a faith leader.
Answer hate with love.
Answer cruelty with kindness.
We must also work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections, and that turns classmates and colleagues into friends and neighbors.
Our administration is working closely with local authorities to investigate the shooting and learn everything we can.
We are committed to working with state and local leaders to help secure our schools and tackle the difficult issue of mental health.
Later this month, I will be meeting with the nation's governors and attorney generals, where making our schools and our children safer will be our top priority.
It is not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference.
We must actually make that difference.
In times of tragedy, the bonds that sustain us are those of family, faith, community, and country.
These bonds are stronger than the forces of hatred and evil.
And these bonds grow even stronger in the hours of our greatest need.
And so always, but especially today, let us hold our loved ones close.
Let us pray for healing and for peace.
And let us come together as one nation to wipe away the tears and strive for a much better tomorrow.
Thank you, and God bless you all.
Thank you very much.
You know, what we're saying here is, you know, you hear that.
I think this has to be and can be the last time this happens.
You know, think of where you were yesterday at whatever time, and you turn on your television set, and there you see those seemingly endless line of kids coming out of a school, some of them having witnessed some bodies on the ground, some not alive, and lives shattered, and some losing their friends, some just losing people that were in the school, a shooting in the school.
And then you think of the 17 families now that have spent the day with a coroner, probably a funeral director, and now have to deal with the loss of a child.
And you think of the, you know, how do we stop that without the predictable same old talking points debate that get nothing done?
Anyway, we'll have more on this tonight.
We hope you'll join us.
Full coverage of all of this, the latest 9 Eastern on Hannity on the Fox News Channel.
All right, that's going to wrap things up.
But today we'll have the latest on the shooting that took place yesterday.
17 dead.
Unbelievable.
And of course, we'll have the very latest on MemoGate, Pfizergate, and everything else.
Sarah Carter, much more.
Full coverage tonight.
We hope you'll join us at EDVR Hannity 9 Eastern on the Fox News channel.
Many prayers to the community down in Florida.
Our thoughts and prayers with Parkland and all these families and what they're going through.
