‘The View’ Erupts Into Another Fiery Gun Debate as Alyssa Farah Griffin Says She’s “Safer in My Home Having a Gun”

The View got contentious this morning during a conversation about the six-year-old who shot his teacher in a Virginia elementary school earlier this month. The show kicked off today’s episode with a Hot Topics debate about the incident, which took place Jan. 6 and has since prompted a lawsuit by the teacher, who was injured but survived the shooting.

A lawyer for Abigail Zwerner said yesterday that the teacher had been shot by her student after he had shown multiple warning signs, including threatening another child while the school administration failed to act, per The Associated Press. The allegations sparked a heated conversation on The View, where Alyssa Farah Griffin, a gun owner, defended people’s right to arms.

“I am a gun owner, and I personally feel safer in my home having a gun, having gone through training and the safety protocols,” she explained, but her remark caught Sunny Hostin off-guard.

She asked incredulously, “In New York City?!” but Griffin completely ignored her objection and carried on with her comments.

“The reality is, a legal gun owner can own a gun their whole life and not use it to commit a crime, so there is the weapon, but there’s also the individual,” she said, while noting that she’s “not for rounding up people’s guns.”

The brief clash was followed by a continually heated discussion in which Hostin debated the efficacy of red flag laws with Sara Haines, while Joy Behar compared mass shootings to a collective “mental illness” in the country.

Today’s episode wasn’t the first time Griffin has raised concerns about safety issues in New York City. During an October episode, she and Hostin clashed during a similar debate about gun violence. After Hostin claimed, “New York is one of the safest cities in the country,” noting its “$5 billion budget for the police,” Griffin pushed back.

“Do you feel that, though? I don’t feel safe in New York. I live in the city,” she replied. “I don’t feel safe.”

Behar piled on, siding with Hostin as she told her co-host, “Alyssa, you’re very young. You are. You’re 32 years old, was it? You know, I’ve been around and there were worse crime rates in the ’80s and the ’70s. I was afraid to leave my house at some points.”

Griffin replied, “We shouldn’t settle for that.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC. Watch this morning’s full debate in the video above.