Arm teachers, Trump tells US gun lobby after Texas school massacre
DONALD TRUMP has called for America’s teachers to be armed when in classrooms to prevent another school massacre.
The former US President also suggested armed guards, high fences and single points of entry would prevent shootings like last Tuesday’s atrocity in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 pupils and two teachers dead.
The murders – one of the worst school shootings in US history – took place at Robb Elementary when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos sneaked in with a semi-automatic weapon and opened fire in a classroom.
He was shot dead when a police SWAT team stormed in.
But just 72 hours after the attack that horrified America and reignited debates
‘The existence of evil is the best reason to arm citizens’
about gun control, Mr Trump was guest of honour at a National Rifle Association conference, despite calls for it to be banned.
Thousands of members descended on the George R Brown Convention Center in Texas, where organisers promised 14 acres of ‘guns and gear’. Mr Trump told them: ‘Surely we can all agree our schools should not be the softest target. Our schools should be the single hardest target in our country.’
He added that it was ‘time to finally allow highly trained teachers to safely and dispolice creetly’ carry concealed weapons as part of ‘a comprehensive school safety plan’.
While protesters gathered outside to demand stricter gun controls and chanted ‘NRA, go away’, Mr
Trump joined other senior Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, to say that arming citizens was the best way to keep society safe.
The 75-year-old began his speech by reading out the names of each Robb Elementary victim – which teaches children between the ages of seven and ten – and then attacked for taking as long as an hour to tackle Ramos.
Mr Trump said: ‘The monster who committed this crime is pure evil, pure cruelty, pure hatred, absolute pure hatred. And while those he slaughtered are now with God in Heaven, he will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of Hell.’
He added: ‘The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.’
Mr Trump also told his audience the US should not donate £31 billion in military aid to Ukraine, but instead use the money to secure America’s schools.
‘Before we nation-build the rest of the world, we should be building safe schools for our own children in our own nation,’ he insisted.
The Robb Elementary massacre was the worst school shooting in America since the Sandy Hook killings in 2012, which left 26 dead.