John Oliver Tears Apart Push to Send More Police into Schools: ‘What the F*ck Are You Talking About!?’
John Oliver adamantly argued against sending more police into schools after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas last month.
“Look, we all know what the key problem is here: it’s guns,” Oliver said on Sunday night. “The vast majority of mass shooters, including the shooters at Uvalde and Parkland, obtained the weapons they used through legal purchases. So we know what the answer to this problem is, too: It’s gun control. It’s meaningful, effective gun laws. But that hasn’t stopped some from desperately pitching absolutely anything other than that as a solution.”
The host noted that while the common denominator in all school shootings is a gun, conservatives continue to advocate for any solution other than gun control.
Oliver went on to play clips of conservative pundits calling for solutions such as religion and the inclusion of “ballistic blankets” in schools.
“What are you talking about?!” Oliver snapped after airing the clips. “Use a blanket is not a strategy for stopping deaths during a school shooting. It’s barely a strategy for ‘a bird got in the house.’”
The host later pointed to the National Rifle Association’s convention, which was held in Texas three days after the Uvalde shooting, adding that organization leader Wayne LaPierre pushed for further funding for the police and the addition of security resources officer programs in schools.
“It’s not that surprising that the solution from the CEO of the NRA is more people with guns,” Oliver said. “It’d be like hearing ‘the garbage dump is overflowing, so we need more piles of garbage’ from the head of the National Raccoon Association I mean, what else do you really expect him to say?”
Oliver shared that the federal government also allocated $750 million to hire of more than 6,500 school resource officers in the six years after the Columbine school shooting in 1999.
This rise in police funding allowed for a law enforcement officer to be on a school’s campus at least once a week, while other resources suffered.
“A recent report found 14 million students go to a school with police but without a counselor, nurse, psychologist, or social worker,” Oliver said, adding, “That is 14 million kids who are closer in proximity to a pair of handcuffs than they are to a medical or mental health professional.”
The host also noted that there was law enforcement present on the campuses of both Robb Elementary School and Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida — the site of a 2018 shooting in which 17 people were killed.
Oliver continued to note that a 2020 study concluded that shooters were not deterred by officers or increased security in schools, airing a clip in which an expert argued that police presence in schools could encourage shooters to come more heavily armed.
“If school cops can make shootings worse, why then are we still pitching them as a solution?” Oliver asked. “If Off! discovered that their mosquito repellant attracted mosquitoes, they’d stop selling it, or at the very least rebrand it as a cologne for lonely mosquito bachelors.”
Oliver then reiterated, “School police are not the answer to school shootings,” adding that the “answer to that is gun control.”
“And when we throw more cops into schools as an easy way out of that difficult and necessary conversation, we not only fail to keep our kids safe from gun violence, we condemn them to a system that criminalizes the very essence of childhood,” he added.
“Kids deserve to be annoying without being arrested. To be sad and angry without being body slammed. They deserve to have tantrums, throw carrots, do science experiments, talk shit and carve their names into stuff without risking being in the back of a police car. They definitely deserve better than the fundamental lie the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy who can arrest a five-year-old.”
Watch above, via YouTube.
