Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell Fails on Guns

From the Roanoke Times:

Gov. Bob McDonnell said this morning that allowing public school employees to carry firearms is an idea worth discussing in the aftermath of last week’s mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school.

McDonnell addressed gun laws and school safety policies during an appearance on WTOP radio in Washington, D.C. He was asked during the program if Virginia should consider allowing teachers, supervisors and principals to be armed inside of school buildings.

“I know there’s been a knee-jerk reaction against that,” McDonnell said. “ I think there should at least be a discussion of that. If people were armed, not just a police officer but other school officials who were trained and chose to have a weapon, certainly there would have been an opportunity to stop aggressors coming into the school. So I think that’s a reasonable discussion that ought to be had.”

McDonnell stopped short of endorsing the idea. But, he said, there have been similar debates about allowing airline pilots to be armed and, after the 2007 mass shootings at Virginia Tech, about allowing university employees to have concealed handguns on campus.