GOP Senator Says Children Are 'Valuable Assets' So Please Don't Kill Them

In an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition on Thursday, Republican Senator Mike Rounds, of South Dakota, was asked what Congress should do about mass shootings after yesterday’s horrific shooting in Parkland, FL.

His suggestions were truly shit, but we’ll get to that in a minute. First, his immediate response, the closest he gets to expressing sadness about the murder of children, was to say: “You have to recognize, our most valuable assets are our kids.”

Our most valuable assets are our kids.

Assets. Assets!

Yes, we shouldn’t kill children because they’re assets, valuable little future workers for our miserable ever-churning capitalist machine. Not that they are humans, young humans who rely on adults to protect them, to create public policies that keep them safe from murderers, no: protect them because they’re “valuable.” Their futures were snatched away from them by a disturbed individual wielding a gun you can buy legally, not their “value.”

The rest of Rounds’ answer was incoherent drivel, a truly pathetic response to the news of 17 dead:

I think number one you have to recognize, our most valuable assets are our kids, and yet at the same time when we start talking about the security activities that we’ve done so far, we’ve tried but many cases we probably haven’t looked at exactly what it’s going to take to provide multiple lines of defense around schools. Nobody wants to see schools turned into armed fortresses, and yet compare that with just walking into this office building right here, you walk into this office building right here, there’s locked doors to begin with, you’ve got to be allowed in, one at time, there’s cameras there, then you go into the front desk, where you are then ID’d and then you are able to come in with an escort into the rest of the building. Compare that with what happens with a school. So what I think we have to be talking about if we really want to do this is look at whether or not we’re prepared to put resources in place that will actually allow for multiple lines of defense on a school by school basis.

Asked what Congress should do about mass shootings, all Rounds can talk about is how NPR has a front desk and maybe schools should think about THAT. (The host, Steve Inskeep, quickly pointed out that a locked door wouldn’t do much to stop someone with an AR-15.)

Rounds has an A rating from the NRA, which said in its 2014 endorsement: “We can count on Mike Rounds to stand up for our constitutional freedoms in the U.S. Senate.”

How lucky that we can also count on Rounds to stand up for Our Precious Future Workers.

You can listen to the whole interview and hear the rest of his garbage answers over at NPR.