Parkland Dad Sparks Backlash After Saying Parents Are Responsible For Protecting Kids From School Shootings

A father of one of the 17 murdered victims of the 2018 Parkland school shooting sparked an angry backlash after saying in a Fox News interview it is parents' responsibility to keep their children safe from school gunmen.

Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow died in the shooting, made the comments to Fox News' host Laura Ingraham just hours after the Tuesday school shooting in Uvalde, Texas in which 19 elementary school students and two teachers were murdered.

Pollack—who helped pass legislation in Florida to allow schools to have more guns on site—told Ingraham parents must do their due diligence to ensure the school their children attend is safe.

See his comments below.

After Ingraham commented on the lack of precautions at schools like "an intercom or bullet-proof glass," Pollack said:

"It’s the parents, it’s your responsibility where you send your children to school."

"You have to know now after these shootings, and every week there’s a shooting, whether it's a school or a supermarket, that you need to check where your kids go to school."

Pollack went on to describe the sorts of precautions parents should be looking for.

"You need to go back to the school and see, is there a single point of entry? Do you have guards at the school?"

Pollack also claimed he hears from parents all the time who have chosen to put their children in private schools because they take security "way more serious."

On their face Pollack's recommendations seem perfectly reasonable, but they are the polar opposite of effective according to a wealth of studies.

Not only have mental health experts warned armed guards in schools negatively impact students emotionally, they have also been shown definitively to increase violence in schools and raise death counts in shooting incidents.

And while private schools may have better security, the overwhelming majority of parents cannot afford to pay the exorbitant tuition fees to send their children to private schools where security is better funded.

Pollack's politics of personal responsibility also ignore the most glaring fact of all—the United States which has the most lax gun-safety laws of any developed country in the world—is the only place on Earth where school shootings happen with regularity.

The 2018 Parkland shooting in which Pollack's daughter died sparked such a groundswell toward gun control measures it even put a a dent in the National Rifle Association's influence on politics for the first time in years.

But Pollack was not among the parents who joined that groundswell.

Instead, he was advocating for more guns in schools so vocally he was invited to the White House by former Republican President Donald Trump, an honor not extended to other families—not even the family of a staff member who was killed when he made himself a human shield to protect students.

Taken together, Pollack's comments left many people disgusted.

In his Fox News appearance, Pollack wasted no time criticizing the Uvalde school district either, questioning whether the district had "learned anything" from the death of his daughter.