White House talks school safety
Measures announced that Trump will include in proposals
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s plan to combat school shootings will include assistance for states to pay for firearms training for teachers and a call for improvement of the background check system.
But Trump’s plan will not include a push for an increase in the minimum age for buying assault weapons or an embrace of more comprehensive background checks, as Trump has advocated at times.
Instead, a new federal commission on school safety will examine a dozen issues that could make schools safer, including raising the age to buy a gun, expanding background checks and implementing rating systems for violent entertainment.
“There is no time to waste,” Education Secretary Betsy Devos said Sunday night. “No student. No family. No teacher and no school should have to live the horror of Parkland or Sandy Hook or Columbine again.”
In a call with reporters Sunday evening, administration officials described the plan as a fulfillment of Trump’s call for action in the wake of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, which left 17 students and staffers dead.
Devos, who will lead the commission, said that “far too often, the focus” after such tragedies “has been only on the most contentious fights, the things that have divided people and sent them into their entrenched corners.”
She described the plan as “pragmatic.”
As part of that plan, the White House has directed the Justice Department to help states partner with local law enforcement to provide “rigorous firearms training to specifically qualified volunteer school personnel,” said Andrew Bremberg, director of the president’s Domestic Policy Council.
Trump is calling on states to pass temporary, court-issued risk protection orders, which allow law enforcement to confiscate guns from individuals who pose risks to themselves and others and temporarily prevent them from buying firearms.
The president is also calling for better coordination between mental health professionals, school officials and law enforcement. And he has called for a full audit and review of the FBI tip line.
Trump had several times endorsed an increase in the minimum age for buying rifles or perhaps other guns from 18 to 21. Those proposals were not part of the package announced Sunday.