Fox News host Tucker Carlson has compared teachers talking to their students about guns with having sex with their pupils. Carlson made the comments during Wednesday's edition of his show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, on the same day that students across the United States staged a walkout in an effort to push for stronger gun control legislation.
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"Kids who are under the care of a teacher who has control of their grades and life are not free agents," Carlson said. "They can't act fully independently as you and I can because they're under the control of an authority figure. This is really simple, this is why teachers aren't allowed to have sex with students because they're in power and the kids aren't. So why are teachers allowed to direct kids towards a political ideology? It's really simple."
It is, in fact, against the law in many states for teachers to have a sexual relationship with a student, even if the pupil is above the legal age of consent. It is not the first time, though, that Carlson has effectively made light of teachers having sex with students.
In 2014, the conservative firebrand said it was "ludicrous" that a teacher having sex with an underage male student is considered rape.
"It's ludicrous that we are calling this a rape," Hannity said on Fox News. "Are you serious? I'll tell you what's wrong to this extent—he went and tattled to the police and destroyed her life. Are you joking? What a whiny country this is."
Carlson has also had plenty to say about students making their voices heard on the issue of gun control and school safety in the wake of a shooting at a Florida high school last month that left 17 people dead. He appeared particularly outraged by Wednesday's nationwide protest, claiming that those students who walked out of class were incapable of acting of their own accord and were being manipulated by adults on the left.
"The walkout is being hailed by our ruling class as an act of moral bravery, but of course, students do not act independently," he said. "Brave as they may be, they can't act independently, they're under the control of adults, in this case, by definition.
He added: "They're in school. So, when you hear 16-year-olds scream 'Hey NRA, how many people did you kill today,' you can guess about whether they know what they're saying, or whether they really believe it. Some of them do. But you can be certain adults are behind it, and they are. s wrong to exploit them, which, by the way, is exactly what is being done to them today, what the left is doing, and has always done—from Mao's Red Guards, to right now."
