President Donald Trump bows his head during an opening prayer at the start of a listening session with high school students and teachers in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 21, 2018. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Holy moly, this is glorious.
Tonight President Trump was in what has been billed as a “listening session” featuring parents and students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School which was the scene of the murderous rampage by Nikolas Cruz one week ago.
Via Time:
President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday during a listening session with survivors and family members of school shootings that arming teachers could be one solution to stopping tragedy.
“An attack has lasted, on average, about three minutes. It takes 5 to 8 minutes for responders, for police to come in. If you had a teacher who is adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly,” Trump said at the event, flanked by two teenage girls who survived the school shooting last week in Parkland, Florida. “The good thing about that …. you will have a lot of people that would be armed, that would be ready.”
He mentioned the assistant football coach who was killed and repeated this young man’s opinon
(Read the story by Sarah Lee)
ROTC Student: “If Coach Feis had had his firearm in school that day, I believe that he most likely could’ve stopped the threat.”
Feis was the football coach who died shielding students, he was a trained security guard but wasn't allowed to carry a gun to protect students. pic.twitter.com/qrXCk6pj6N
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) February 17, 2018
The Twitter comments are nothing short of awesome. A sampling:
Solutions given…
– Ban assault weapons
– Raise age for AR-15
– More security
– Focus on mental health
– Different path of entrance at schoolsTrump…
– Give teachers guns#ParklandStudentsSpeak— Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) February 21, 2018
Student: We want universal background checks and stricter regulations.
Another student: Also important to outlaw semi-automatic weapons and recoil tools that make guns perform like automatic weapons.
Trump: I hear you. I am going to eliminate gun-free zones and arm teachers
— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) February 21, 2018
Trump's proposal during his "listening session" to arm teachers and bring more guns into our schools is beyond preposterous. That's like saying the solution to lung cancer is to smoke more cigarettes. #ParklandStudentsSpeak
— Eugene Gu, MD (@eugenegu) February 21, 2018
I would post more of them, but then I’d have to ban myself.
Trump: "does anyone have any actual solutions?"
Parent: "arm the teachers with guns"
MSNBC: pic.twitter.com/8ZLIE2EpRg
— Ken Webster (@KenWebsterII) February 21, 2018
All snark aside. The only thing that is going to prevent school shootings, other than complacent people getting off their asses and doing their jobs, is to make schools a harder target. (I think not arming airline pilots is a stupid move seriously, you trust them to fly the freaking plane but it is too dangerous to for them to have a gun?) The way you make the school a harder target is by adding firearms to existing passive measures. You add firearms by either arming teachers and staff or by hiring more staff.
This is the whole thing:
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