South Carolina Senate Candidate Suggests Teachers Should Be Able to Carry Machine Guns in School

By Igor Volsky, ThinkProgress

21 January 14

outh Carolina state Sen. Lee Bright (R), who is challenging Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) in the GOP primary, said on Friday that school teachers should be able to carry machine guns to protect students from gun violence.

Appearing on Fox News Radio's The Alan Colmes Show, Bright expanded on his proposed bill to create high school courses on how to use a fire arm by agreeing with Colmes that the government cannot legally restrict gun ownership on school grounds:

COLMES: So [teachers] shouldn't have machine guns?

BRIGHT: I would think a teacher protecting a school grounds should be able to carry whatever she can carry legally.

COLMES: So should machine guns be legal to carry?

BRIGHT: The Second Amendment is pretty clear. It says the right to carry arms should not be infringed. [...]

COLMES: So you should be able to have any gun you want?

BRIGHT: Well, I don't see how the government can regulate it.

In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can limit ownership of "dangerous and unusual" weapons that are not in "common use." As conservative Justice Antonin Scalia concluded in the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller - which held that the Second Amendment provides an individual right to carry a firearm under certain circumstances - "nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms…in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms."

Congress significantly limited the sale of machine guns in the 1986 Firearms Owners' Protection Act, which prevents the sale to civilians "of all machine guns made after the law took effect."