Arming teachers up to states, Trump says
Tweet calls idea ‘very inexpensive’ deterrent to attacks
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Saturday that it would be up to states to decide whether to implement his controversial proposal to arm teachers, with the hope of deterring gunmen like the one who killed 17 people this month in Parkland, Fla.
Trump also claimed his idea would be “very inexpensive,” a notion that educators and others have disputed because of the training involved. Trump has said he envisions about 20 percent of teachers and other school personnel carrying weapons.
“Armed Educators (and trusted people who work within a school) love our students and will protect them,” the president said on Twitter. “Very smart people. Must be firearms adept & have annual training. Should get yearly bonus. Shootings will not happen again — a big & very inexpensive deterrent. Up to States.”
Trump has been pressing the notion for the past four days and has been more animated about the proposal than any other idea he has floated since the shooting Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
He and others in the administration have also talked about shoring up a federal database used in background checks for gun purchases, raising the age to purchase a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21 and banning bump stocks, a device that makes a semiautomatic gun function like an automatic weapon.
The administration is also looking at using restraining orders to confiscate guns from mentally ill people or those who otherwise raise “red flags.”
Earlier Saturday, Trump retweeted one of his tweets from two days ago that laid out his thinking.
“I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health,” the president said. “Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue — I hope!”
On Friday, Trump argued that the carnage in Parkland would have been less severe if teachers had been armed.
“A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened,” Trump said during an address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual conclave of the American right, held just outside Washington.
The idea of arming teachers is supported by the National Rifle Association but opposed by the National Education Association, the largest teachers lobby.
Trump’s flirtation with modest gun control measures drew swift condemnation from gun groups, hunters and sportsmen who banked on the president to be a stalwart foe of any new restrictions.
“Out in the firearms community there is a great feeling of betrayal and abandonment because of the support he was given in his campaign for president,” Tony Fabian, president of the Colorado State Shooting Association, said Friday.
The comments highlight how little room the president and his party have to maneuver without angering a politically powerful constituency. Just floating proposals that defy the NRA and other groups drew threats of political retribution and legal action.
The confrontation is set to test whether Trump is willing to risk his political capital to take on a core group few Republicans have challenged.
“The president has a unique ability right now to maybe really do something about these school shootings,” said Rep. Tom Rooney, R-Fla. “Nobody is more popular in my district — and I know in a lot of other people’s districts — than Donald Trump. He’s more popular than the NRA. So it’s up to him whether or not anything happens with guns.”
But Charles Zelden, a professor of history and political science at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, said the students speaking out in the shooting’s aftermath “come from a tradition of being heard and are angry enough right now that they won’t stand for not being heard.”
“They’re used to the idea that they’re going to make a difference, that people are going to listen to them,” Zelden said.
Cullen wonders whether the Parkland attack indicates that it’s not the number of deaths or level of outrage that a shooting evokes, but “whether it’s the right group of people with the right standing and the right set of abilities that picks up the ball and runs with it.”