The hosts of Fox News' Outnumbered argued on Wednesday that students were responsible enough to carry firearms at school, but not condoms.
Host Andrea Tantaros noted that faculty at the University of Houston had warned that the state's new open carry law could threaten free speech on campus.
"Professors are advising each other to avoid sensitive topics in class if students are armed," Tantaros explained.
"They are not telling their faculty to do this based on anything that's actually happened," co-host Sandra Smith said. "They're making these statements based on fear and fear alone. There's no evidence that this isn't going to go well or this isn't going to work out or students or going to act in any different way [because some of them are armed]."
Tantaros concluded the segment by suggesting that armed students could have prevented the mass shooting at Virginia Tech -- and then turned her attention to a San Francisco school board that had approved a proposal to give middle school students access to condoms.
Guest host Geraldo Rivera called the idea "kind of wiggy."
"I'm not crazy about it," he said.
"They're not just putting the bucket out there like trick-or-treat, you do have to talk to somebody," Tantaros admitted. "But I do agree with you, Geraldo. I think it's too soon for these middle schoolers. I think they should focus on education, reading, writing, arithmetic."
"I know this is such a highly sexualized culture and it's happening younger and younger and younger," she observed. "With the AIDS scare, a lot of people in the past decades were using protection more. And new, young kids are having sex earlier. They don't have the same confrontation that certain generations did with the AIDS crisis. And there is concern kids are having sex sooner and sooner and they're having unprotected sex."
Tantaros added: "It's just the job of the parents to educate their children [about sex]."
In the end, most of the hosts did agree that it would be acceptable for middle school students to have access to condoms with a parent's permission.
"First thing I'm going to do, I'm going to go to school," Rivera said. "I'm not going to make a scene about it, but I'm going to be intensely upset and engaged."
Watch the video below from Fox News' Outnumbered, broadcast Feb. 26, 2016.
