O'Donnell defends bodyguard's gun permit 

NEW YORK (AP) Rosie O'Donnell, one of the country's most prominent gun control advocates, is defending her son's bodyguard's application for a concealed weapon permit. 

''Whether or not my family is in need of armed guards, that doesn't change my position on gun control,'' O'Donnell told People magazine. ''It's not inconsistent.'' 

National Rifle Association officials and others have accused O'Donnell of hypocrisy since The Greenwich Time, her local paper in Connecticut, reported May 25 that a bodyguard who will accompany her 5-year-old son to kindergarten has applied for a gun permit. 

The television talk show host, who emceed the recent Million Mom March pushing for tighter gun laws, says the bodyguard will not carry the gun to school. She even told People, in its issue out Friday, that her son may change schools because of the hubbub. 

She criticized Greenwich police for releasing information about the application, and said officers should not have come onto the property of her son's preschool to search the bodyguard. 

''That there was no gun was, I'm sure, disappointing to them,'' she said. 

O'Donnell has said she and her three children need protection because of threats made against her as a result of her outspoken stance on gun control. She moved recently from Nyack, N.Y., to a gated community in Greenwich in part because of worries about safety.