‘Arm teachers with guns’, Donald Trump’s solution to provide safety to students
US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said arming teachers could help prevent massacres like last week’s mass shooting at a Florida high school.
Trump had an hour-long White House meeting with students who survived the Florida shooting. Hundreds of students joined scattered protests across the country on Wednesday, including in Washington, Chicago and Pittsburgh.
The attack on a school in Florida became the reason of the long-running US debate over gun rights.
In the attack that took place at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, 17 students and educators were slain on February 14 by a gunman with an AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle. It was called the second-deadliest shooting at a US public school.
The Republican president said he will move quickly to tighten background checks for gun buyers and will consider rising the age for buying certain types of guns.
“If you had a teacher ... who was adept at firearms, it could very well end the attack very quickly,” said Trump.
Some of the participants at the meeting indicated support for Trump’s idea of arming teachers. Others were opposed.
Mark Barden, whose son was killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, said his wife, Jackie, a teacher, “will tell you that school teachers have more than enough responsibilities right now than to have to have the awesome responsibility of lethal force to take a life. Nobody wants to see a shootout in a school,” Barden said.
“I don’t understand why I can still go in a store and buy a weapon of war, an AR,” said Sam Zeif, 18, sobbing after he described texting his family members during the attack.
“Let’s never let this happen again, please, please,” Zeif said.
Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow Pollack, 18, was killed, shouted: “It should have been one school shooting and we should have fixed it. And I’m pissed - because my daughter - I’m not going to see again.”
Before Trump’s meeting, students across the United States walked out of classes in sympathy protests, including hundreds of teens from the Washington suburbs who gathered at the White House.
“I came out here because I don’t feel safe in my school,” said Allyson Zadravec, 15, of Northwood High School in Silver Spring, Maryland. “I want to make sure that everyone who can do something about it hears that I don’t feel safe in my school.”
-PTC News
