At an excruciating meeting with parents who have lost children in school shootings, Donald Trump put forward a proposal he believed would help prevent massacres: Give teachers guns. “It only works when you have people very adept at using firearms, of which you have many,” Trump said. “It would be teachers and coaches.” He added, “An attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes five to eight minutes for responders, for the police to come in, so the attack is over. If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly.”
Arming teachers is a horrible idea. Increasing the number of firearms in schools would increase the odds of firearms being used in schools. It would add to the already palpable anxiety in American schools. And, in dangerous situations, even people who have been extensively trained with firearms do not perform very well, meaning that innocent people are likely to be hurt. Given these realities, Trump’s comments were met with shock.
On Thursday morning, Trump tried to clarify his thoughts about arming teachers.
I never said “give teachers guns” like was stated on Fake News @CNN & @NBC. What I said was to look at the possibility of giving “concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience - only the best. 20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
....immediately fire back if a savage sicko came to a school with bad intentions. Highly trained teachers would also serve as a deterrent to the cowards that do this. Far more assets at much less cost than guards. A “gun free” school is a magnet for bad people. ATTACKS WOULD END!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
....History shows that a school shooting lasts, on average, 3 minutes. It takes police & first responders approximately 5 to 8 minutes to get to site of crime. Highly trained, gun adept, teachers/coaches would solve the problem instantly, before police arrive. GREAT DETERRENT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
....If a potential “sicko shooter” knows that a school has a large number of very weapons talented teachers (and others) who will be instantly shooting, the sicko will NEVER attack that school. Cowards won’t go there...problem solved. Must be offensive, defense alone won’t work!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 22, 2018
Trump is basically just reiterating what he said at the meeting on Wednesday. He also is very much arguing in favor of arming teachers—hundreds of thousands of teachers, if he’s serious about the 20 percent number. He also is conveniently omitting that Stoneman High School, where 17 teenagers were killed last week, had an armed security guard.
Trump has been all over the place on gun control. But his basic plan for school safety is still more guns, which would inevitably mean more violence.