An episode of All In The Family seems to have predicted a policy proposal that President Trump and many other conservatives have made in the wake of the Florida school shooting:
Archie Bunker was the walking caricature of a bigot, a parody created for a 1970s sitcom. Yet the plan by President Donald Trump and the NRA to arm teachers seems to have come straight from “All in the Family.”
In a 1972 episode, the iconic TV character ― played by Carroll O’Connor ― tackled the issue of gun control. At the time, Bunker was responding to hijackings rather than mass shootings, but his solution was eerily similar to Trump’s plan to put guns in schools.
“Arm all your passengers,” Bunker said.
Bunker said a theoretical gunman would no longer have “superiorority” and “ain’t gonna dare to pull out no rod” as a result.
He continued:
“And then your airlines, then they wouldn’t have to search the passengers on the ground no more, they just pass out the pistols at the beginning of the trip, and they pick ’em up again at the end. Case closed.”
Norman Lear, one of the producers of “All In The Family,” noted in 2012 that this clip was frighteningly similar to the NRA’s plan for putting more guns in schools after the Sandy Hook mass shooting.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA executive Wayne LaPierre said at the time.
Here’s the clip in question:
The obvious analogy, of course, is to President Trump’s idea to allow teacher and other non-police school personnel to carry weapons on campus. The difference, though, is that Bunker was a character on television. Donald Trump is really the President. Additionally, Archie eventually came to see the error of his ways on issues such as race, and even with his biases, Archie was a likable character. Donald Trump is not likable, and is on the verge of being 72 years old and seemingly becoming more convinced of his biases as the years go on.
