Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade Pushes for Armed Worshipers After Poway Synagogue Shooting
“I think you have to go ready to defend yourself, ready to defend the congregation who are going there,” the host said.

Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty
Two days after a gunman entered San Diego’s Chabad of Poway and murdered a 60-year-old woman, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade offered a solution: armed worshippers. “I just think that all churches and synagogues, mosques, you have to have somebody in there that's armed these days. Everyone is pointed towards the altar or whatever you worship, and you’re sitting ducks for slaughter,” Kilmeade said on Monday morning’s episode, in a clip first spotted by Media Matters for America. He then appealed directly to cops, detectives, and FBI agents who already attend places of worship: “I think you have to go ready to defend yourself, ready to defend the congregation who are going there to—for solace,” he said.
When Ainsley Earhardt expressed her horror at the idea of metal detectors in churches, Kilmeade doubled down: “these cowards don’t want to get shot back at,” he said. “They want to slaughter you. They don’t want to get in a fight. They just want to kill. So they have to know when they’re coming in, wherever they are going to go, they are going to get shot if they try it. So maybe it’ll discourage the next one.”
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