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Donald Trump’s big listening-session suggestion of arming teachers met with enough criticism that he decided the problem was people not understanding what he had said and that if he just explained it again, the world would see its brilliance. So he took to the Twitter, of course:
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
I never said give teachers guns! I said give 20 percent of teachers guns. Big difference! This important policy proposal follows Trump’s other important gun policy proposals like the rollback of an Obama-era rule making it more difficult for people with mental illness to get guns and slashing funding for the gun background check system.
....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!
Oh, yeah, that would go well. The teachers would be highly trained, you say? In one shooting incident in New York City, all of the bystanders shot were shot by the police. Shooters would be more likely to get help killing more people than they would be to be taken out quickly.
....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!
So if school shootings end unrelated to the arrival of police, why would having the equivalent (in Donald’s dreams) of police there change things, aside from adding to the hail of bullets?
....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!
Mass shooters often kill themselves before the police arrive. They’re ready to die.
In a statement, National Education Association president Lily Eskelsen Garcia said that:
Bringing more guns into our schools does nothing to protect our students and educators from gun violence. Our students need more books, art and music programs, nurses and school counselors; they do not need more guns in their classrooms. Parents and educators overwhelmingly reject the idea of arming school staff. Educators need to be focused on teaching our students. We need solutions that will keep guns out of the hands of those who want to use them to massacre innocent children and educators. Arming teachers does nothing to prevent that.
And to follow on the point that students need more books, art and music programs, and nurses and school counselors—as many have wondered, with exactly what school funding money would Trump be training and arming teachers? Even if you leave aside the reality that in a school shooting, armed teachers would lead to more deaths, not fewer, are we talking about a scenario in which schools would have even less money for books and nurses in order to pay for guns? Or is the one kind of school funding Trump would be willing to push for money for guns?