Dem senator: DeVos ‘sends shivers down the spine’

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) says parents should fear President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

“I was pretty stunned when she couldn’t just articulate some compassion for what schools are going through when we have in some years an average of one school shooting every week,” he said of DeVos on CNN Wednesday.

“This idea that you need guns in every school — a ban on gun-free school zones, as Donald Trump says he wants — because we have to protect kids from grizzly attacks?” Murphy asked. “It’s sort of, on one hand, laughable, and on the other hand, tragic.

{mosads}“The idea that we’re going to potentially put somebody into the Department of Education who believes that it’s OK for guns to be in our schools, for our teachers to be armed, boy, that sends shivers down the spine of almost every parent in this country.”

DeVos and Murphy clashed Tuesday over allowing guns in schools during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

“I think that’s best left to locales and states to decide,” DeVos said when asked if firearms should be allowed in schools.

“You can’t say definitively today that guns shouldn’t be in schools?” asked Murphy, who backed 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Trump.

DeVos then cited an anecdote from Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) as an example of when guns might prove useful in schools.

“I would that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies,” she said.