Fox Host Draws Flak For Raising ‘Access To Guns’ In Tense Exchange Over Mass Shooting
Fox News host Trey Gowdy clashed with co-host Lisa Boothe when he brought up “access to guns” as a key concern amid the mass shooting at a Minneapolis church.
On Wednesday, a mass shooter shot through the windows of Annunciation Roman Catholic church in Minneapolis, killing two children, ages 8 and 10, and injuring 17 others. The shooter took their own life.
Gowdy and Boothe were covering the shooting on Wednesday afternoon’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Outnumbered, during which Gowdy brought up an issue that many conservatives try to avoid under these circumstances: access to guns.
The former congressman addressed issues like straw purchases and access through private sales.
When Gowdy said it was time for “a conversation of freedom versus protecting children,” Boothe chimed in that there were already “laws on the books” — like “murder”:
TREY GOWDY: You want to track the shooter. You also want to track the access to the firearms.
Where did the guns come from? Were they straw purchases? Did he go into a gun store? Was it a private sale?
That’s all you can do now because there’s not going to be a trial. These parents, they want answers. Everyone wants to know why.
Emily, there is no answer to the why. Nothing explains shooting at children. We could bring in the world’s foremost forensic psychiatrist. OK, he was troubled. He was bullied at school.
Well, then go do something to the people that bullied you. You picked on children.
So if we are waiting on a why, then we’re going to be unsatisfied. And where we direct our energies and our emotions is to the trial. And he deprived those parents of justice by taking his own life. They’ll never get the answers that they want.
EMILY COMPAGNO: In your experience, is the criminal justice system equipped to even handle these? You’ve seen, I feel like more than anyone has really encountered such tragic cases involving children during your career, and we’ve talked about the grief and the ripple effect of the parents and in the community, and in your role as prosecutor, and as the pieces are taken up by those members of the justice system, what now?
TREY GOWDY: Uh… That uh… There our system is reactive. Something bad happens, we react to it.
And what people are crying for now is how can we prevent this? How can we stop it?
And the only way to stop it is to identify the shooter ahead of time or keep the weapons out of their hands.
And so we’re gonna have to have a conversation of freedom versus protecting children. I mean how many school shootings does it take before we’re going to have a conversation about keeping firearms out–?
It’s always a young White male, almost always. I mean, did anyone this morning think “I wonder if that was a female.”
Did any of y’all think that? I mean there’s been one school shooting involving a female. One, yeah Tennessee. But other than that it is usually young White males.
LISA BOOTHE: But do we not already have laws on the books? For these types of situations?
TREY GOWDY: Like what?
LISA BOOTHE: Well, murder! Is what happened. And maybe the why is that you had a 10-year-old and an 8-year old praying in the pews. Were they targeted for their faith?
Watch above via Fox News Channel’s Outnumbered.
