The hosts of Fox News’ morning show on Wednesday said President Barack Obama was taking advantage of elementary school children and using them as “props” to push his gun control agenda — and then gave viewers advice on how to obtain assault weapons after they had been banned in New York.

The Associated Press on Wednesday reported that a number of children had written to the president after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School and asked him to do something to stop gun violence. Some of those children were expected to be at the White House Wednesday afternoon as Obama announced proposals designed to makes schools safer.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The White House is getting some flak for essentially using these kids as props for the president’s agenda,” Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy opined on Wednesday. “I can understand if they were to have some of the parents from Sandy Hook, but the children… I mean, ultimately, the best way to keep a lot of kids safe is to keep them out of politics.”

“I think it’s a tough thing, number one, when you use kids,” co-host Brian Kilmeade agreed. “They aren’t really going to say anything. I mean, they’re just going to sit there like the average middle-class families that sat behind him when he was trying to push the tax cuts forward.”

“I’m not saying these letters aren’t sincere and the kids aren’t worried,” he added. “But let’s just say this: If you are going to talk about keeping those kids safe, don’t you also have to talk about doing what Staten Island did in a lot of areas, putting some armed guards in their school, what New York City does in a lot of schools, metal detectors before the kids come? Because having gun control is just one small element of it.”

“It is a small element,” co-host Gretchen Carlson insisted. “These are the kids that actually reached out to him so that’s their defense, that they’re using those kids. But let’s face it, politics is all about imagery and I’m not saying it’s necessarily right, but it’s going to be the image that’s going to be sent around. It’s that picture, right? It’s going to look like these kids are standing behind what the president’s going to be proposing.”

Doocy fantasized that one of the children could interrupt the announcement to ask Obama for spending cuts: “Can you imagine, Gretch, if one of those kids — because if they wrote to the president concerned about what was happening in the news — said, ‘Hey, Mr. President, what’s the deal with the debt? I’ve been hearing a lot about the debt ceiling. What’s my family’s share? I’m just a kid, I understand when I’m a grown up it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars. Could you guys please cut spending now.'”

ADVERTISEMENT

The Fox News hosts went on to explain how viewers could bypass New York’s trailblazing new gun law to obtain assault-style weapons.

“We want to show you a graphic of a particular kind of weapon that has been banned, a rifle,” Carlson explained. “The reason it’s been banned is you can see there is how you hold on to the gun. That’s called a military-style [pistol grip]. The one below is legal simply because it does not have that little piece, but according to what I’ve read, it fires off the same amount of bullets.”

“So this is one of the little tiny loopholes that you might be able to find,” she suggested.

ADVERTISEMENT

Watch this video from Fox News’ Fox & Friends, broadcast Jan. 16, 2013.