Nikki Haley Calls for a Cop in Every School, Dismisses Gun-Control Arguments after Nashville Shooting
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Dover, N.H. — Presidential candidate Nikki Haley offered a call-to-action on school safety in response to a Nashville shooting that left six people dead on Monday.
A 28-year-old female shooter who identifies as transgender opened fire at The Covenant School on Monday killing three children and three adults, police said. The shooter was a former student, though the motive for the shooting was not immediately clear. The victims ranged in age from 8 years old to 61 years old.
The shooter entered the private Christian school of roughly 200 students through a side entrance, according to police spokesperson Don Aaron, and was wielding two “assault-style” rifles and a pistol, police said. The shooter was fatally shot by police.
“While we want to lift up those families in prayer, people are going to say, ‘But what are we going to do about it?’” Haley said during a town hall style event in Dover, N.H. “There are answers on what to do about it. We have to decide as a country that we’re going to do something about it.”
She suggested schools should have only one point of entry and that every school should have a law-enforcement officer stationed on campus “all the time.” Metal detectors, which are already “present everywhere kids go,” should be used more widely in schools as well, she said.
“You’re going to hear everybody want to talk about gun control,” she said. “My thing is, I don’t want to take away your ability to protect yourself until they do those things that protect those kids and we need to make sure that happens in every school because it’s happened too often and we need to make sure that stops.”
Later, a member of the audience asked Haley what she would do to address the country’s mental-health crisis if she were elected.
Haley referred back to the nation’s school shootings and said the U.S. should have mental-health specialists in every school.
“America has failed when it comes to mental health. They refuse to acknowledge it for what it is,” she said.
She also suggested people on the street with mental-health issues should not be jailed but should instead be put on a teleconference to speak to a mental-health professional and “Get the help that they need.”
“When we start treating mental health like the cancers we treat, all of a sudden you’re going to find we have a you’re gonna find we have a healthy American population,” she said.
