MAMA GRIZZLY

Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears

During her Education secretary confirmation hearing.

Betsy DeVos, the Republican mega-donor who President-elect Donald Trump picked to head the U.S. Department of Education, suggested during her contentious confirmation hearing Tuesday that schools could keep guns in case of grizzly bears. “You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in schools?” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) asked. DeVos responded by referring to a school in rural Wapiti, Wyoming, that had to ward off grizzly bears—a report she attributed to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY). She said she’d “imagine” the school had guns to defend against bears. But DeVos added: “If the question is around gun violence and the results of that, please know that my heart bleeds and is broken for those families that have lost any individual due to gun violence.”