Steve Bannon Wants Kids to Use Guns to Defend Themselves From Bullies

Steve Bannon, right-wing media personality and former adviser to ex-President Donald Trump, suggested in a recent public appearance that children should be armed with guns in order to ward off bullies.

Previously a chairman for conservative outlet Breitbart News, Bannon served as chief executive officer for Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and later became his chief strategist during the former president's first seven months in the White House. Since leaving the Trump administration, Bannon has hosted the War Room podcast series and advocated for far-right political projects globally.

On Tuesday, Bannon broadcast an episode of his podcast from Turning Point USA's America Fest, during which he advocated for American children to receive firearms training in school, arguing that possessing guns would also help them combat bullying, a suggestion that drew cheers from the conservative crowd at the event.

"We should get kids off social media and start teaching them the proper use of guns, how to defend themselves, their own self-defense," Bannon said. "Should we not make that an integrated part of the education so they're not picked on or not threatened and certainly not scared, right?"

Newsweek reached out to gun control advocacy group Everytown via email on Tuesday for comment.

In response to the continuing national trend of gun violence in schools, numerous Republican lawmakers have argued that the answer to the mass shooting problem is more guns in schools, not stricter gun control laws, as Democrats have argued. These arguments have largely suggested training teachers to use firearms and hiring more security for schools, less so arming children.

The suggestions have been met with derision by gun control advocates and teachers, with a majority of the latter in Texas saying they did not want firearms training in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and faculty members.

Despite that sort of opposition, Republican-led states like Ohio and Louisiana responded to the killings with legislation to create programs for arming school teachers. The bill in Louisiana was voted down, but the Ohio bill passed and was signed into law by Republican Governor Mike DeWine, requiring only 24 hours of training to allow teachers to be armed in the classroom.

Studies conducted over the last several years, including a major one by the Boston University School of Public Health, have found that states with looser gun laws and broader gun ownership did not see a decrease in gun violence. In fact, the Boston University study found, such states had higher rates of firearm homicides.