A former Arizona sheriff who has taken the side of cattle ranchers in Nevada said this week that he would have allowed his own wife and daughters to be shot as human shields because it would look bad for the federal government on television.

In a statement to Fox News on Monday that was first flagged by Glenn Beck’s The Blaze, former Sheriff Richard Mack talked about his strategy to put women on the front lines if a gunfight broke out between “rogue federal agents” and rancher Cliven Bundy, who reportedly owes the taxpayers more than $1 million for allowing his cattle to graze on government land.

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“We were actually strategizing to put all the women up at the front,” he recalled. “If they are going to start shooting, it’s going to be women that are going to be televised all across the world getting shot by these rogue federal officers.”

Speaking to radio host Ben Swann later on Monday, Mack explained his plan.

“It was a tactical plot that I was trying to get them to use,” Mack said. “If they’re going to start killing people, I’m sorry, but to show the world how ruthless these people are, women needed to be the first ones shot.”

“I’m sorry, that sounds horrible,” he continued. “I would have put my own wife or daughters there, and I would have been screaming bloody murder to watch them die. I would have gone next, I would have been the next one to be killed. I’m not afraid to die here. I’m willing to die here.”

“But the best ploy would be to have had women at the front. Because, one, I don’t think they would have shot them. And, two, if they had, it would have been the worst thing that we could have shown to the rest of the world, that these ruthless cowards hired by the federal government will do anything.”

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Watch the video below from Fox News and the Ben Swann Show, broadcast April 15, 2014.

[Photo credit: Gage Skidmore]