Trump calls for arming teachers, raising gun purchase age to stop ‘savage sicko’ shooters
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President Trump on Thursday defended his call to arm some teachers as a way to stop a “savage sicko” from causing mass casualties, while also calling for gun control measures -- including raising the age for purchasing firearms to 21.
In a flurry of tweets, the president hit back at media coverage of his comments about arming teachers the day before. He suggested his remarks were mischaracterized, but made clear he supports allowing some trained teachers to carry concealed weapons.
“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,” Trump tweeted.
“20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to 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,” Trump added. “A ‘gun free’ school is a magnet for bad people. ATTACKS WOULD END!”
The president’s tweets followed a listening session at the White House Wednesday afternoon with students, parents and teachers affected by the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting last week which left 17 dead. He also invited parents affected by the Sandy Hook and Columbine massacres.
During the almost two-hour session, Trump left the floor open for suggestions to prevent school shootings. One parent floated the idea of concealed-carry for teachers—an idea the president discussed at length with support, noting the administration would look “very strongly” at the option. His Thursday morning tweets seemed to double down on his earlier comments, even as he criticized media coverage.
At the same time, Trump made clear Thursday that he will urge several new gun law restrictions -- including raising the age for purchasing firearms, something sources said he was considering.
“I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health,” Trump tweeted Thursday. “Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue—I hope!”
TRUMP ON PREVENTING MASS SHOOTINGS: 'WE'RE GOING TO GET IT DONE'
But Trump especially sought to clarify and defend his comments about guns in schools.
Trump said Wednesday that “a gun-free zone to a maniac, they’re all cowards, is 'let’s go in and attack because bullets aren’t coming at us.'”
On Thursday, he tweeted: “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!”
Minutes later, Trump added: “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.”
Earlier this week, the president directed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to create new regulations to ban firearm modifiers, including the “bump stock” used in the Las Vegas massacre in October 2017.
Under current federal law, licensed firearm dealers cannot sell handguns to people under 21 and cannot sell long guns to people under 18, according to the Giffords Law Center, which tracks gun laws and advocates for more restrictions. Some states already impose laws with tighter minimum age requirements.
The National Rifle Association, which endorsed Trump in the 2016 presidential election, quickly rejected any talk of raising the age for buying long guns to 21.
“Legislative proposals that prevent law-abiding adults aged 18-20 years old from acquiring rifles and shotguns effectively prohibits them for purchasing any firearm, thus depriving them of their constitutional right to self-protection,” the NRA said in a statement.
It is unclear at this point, however, whether Trump will push for a change in federal law or encourage a change at the state level. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/22/trump-calls-for-arming-teachers-raising-gun-purchase-age-to-stop-savage-sicko-shooters.html
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Arming teachers is one of the dumbest fucking ideas I've ever heard and I can't believe that it's considered to be a legitimate position to take.
So what's your solution. Another useless, idiotic, common sense gun law? Yeah that oughta work. The anti-gun left wing have had all kinds of gun laws and background checks in use for years and they have not worked.
My solution is simple:
Don't allow teachers to carry guns on campus.
Wow. How groundbreaking.
Care to list them?
There has been nothing since 2005, and even the Brady law has expired.
Yet another ass-sourced "statistic" from one of the most prolific sources for them. Here's a little news item just out today of a teacher with a gun:
Georgia Police Respond To Reports Of Shots Fired At High School
Oh, yeah, let's arm lots more teachers.
Your source is inaccurate.
Before rushing to judge an ongoing investigation , perhaps we should all wait until we learn whether or not Mr. Davidson was allowed to carry his gun on the school's property.
Pretty sure that qualifies as a "mic drop" moment. You should get bonus points.
Doesn't matter, he IS a teacher with a gun at a school. Claiming that he would have acted differently based on having "permission" to carry it, is too much spin for anyone to believe.
is arming teachers a viable situation ? I tend to think so, if they volunteer to do so, I believe there are some teachers in the nation , that the only reason they don't arm themselves , is because its against the law where they are . or it is frowned on.
a question I think of is , how many teachers are there , that are military veterans? they are already trained in the proficiency of firearms use , at government expense.
Again , if a teacher decides that maybe being armed is something they would consider , it would have to be totally voluntary on the teachers part , no one can make them do it . That also doesn't mean that they should not have to go through some sort of training or screening process, that would be up to the administration , local and state governments , and the feds to a little degree.
One of the reasons IMHO, that schools are being targeted more and more , is the fact that they ARE suppose to be gun free zones, they are a soft target for someone bent on doing such things , they become embolden because they KNOW, no one can shoot back., and we are finding out , that even IF there is an SRO on scene , that single officer isnt turning out to be much of a deterent because of the area they have to cover. throw in the unknown of if a teacher is being allowed to posess , and that makes someone think about the odds they face, and no one can convince me that in these preplanned attacks , those odds have not been considered beforehand. these shooters might be crazy , but they are not stupid.( then again maybe some of them are).
Point is , there is a resource available , and is worthy of consideration .
OK have things to do I wont be back til later tonight . have a good one all.
that... combined with emotional adolescence on psychotropic drugs is never going to be a good idea.
I used to manage a shooting range. Between the shooting fees, the firearms, instructor fees, and ammunition, it is not a cheap experience. Who is going to pick up the tab?
I would think the training would be done by the local Police using their shooting range or at the Police Academy using their facilities.
Arm the teachers. Combat pay for armed teachers. Typical rwnj responses. The proverbial band-aid on an exit wound.
The NRA loves because just think of how many more guns and how many more holsters and ammo there masters in the weapons industry will be able to sell. This has nothing to do with protecting the students as far as the NRA is concerned. It's purely a profit motive for their bosses.
I wonder how much Trump's cut is going to be?
Out of curiosity, what happens to all the students caught in the crossfire when a teacher and an armed assailant get into a gunfight?
I ask because everybody seems to be assuming that bullets don't miss their intended targets. Never mind Colonel Grossman's excellent essay on killing, called "On Killing", whose findings are quite relevant to this topic.
Very good point - I just cited an article upthread where an "armed" assistant principle apprehended a school shooter (off campus) , but he wasn't even carrying a gun when the event happened - his gun was unloaded in his truck and he had to retrieve it and load it first. Plus he never even fired the weapon because the background made it an unsafe shot (he's an ex-Marine and in the National Guard):
That assistant principle says arming teachers is a very bad idea for many other reasons. And while these school shootings events are relatively rare there's still not even one case of an armed teacher taking out a shooter, despite Texas and a few other states allowing teachers to be armed.
Thanks for providing that link. I was glad to have read that story.
Won't the decision as to whether or not to arm teachers will be made by the states? (If that turns out to be true, my guess would be that some states will be strongly opposed to the idea, while some other will implement it).
But good idea or bad idea, I think most teachers will be strongly opposed to have armed teachers in the school and probably many will organize to take action to oppose it.
Interesting that you think suicidal and mentally ill teens will respond that way, particularly given that the most recent shooter knew that an armed deputy sheriff was on site.
Yes, and Texas, Utah and a few other red states already allow it. The only result so far are a few gun accidents where a teacher shot themselves and cases where the teacher left the gun out on a desk or in the rest room and forgot about it, making it easy for a kid to steal it or use it.
Thing is cruz wasn't suicidal, he had an escape plan and used it , it didn't work. he valued his OWN life.
I wont deny he is mentally ill , but suicidal? as gump said , I don't know bout that.....
In Sept 2016 he apparently made a suicide attempt.
Early on he was suicidal, but later it turned to killing others and he did try to escape the day he killed those children.
I'd like see where those teachers made all those mistakes as well with the guns.
He's on a suicide watch right now.
Here's something you may not know about "crazed kids". An important thing to know: They are called "crazed kids" for a good reason-- i.e. that they are crazy!
And something else that perhaps you are unaware of: believe it or not, crazy people often do crazy things!
I could be wrong, but IMO attacking a school that has lots of security guards and/or armed teachers and/or armed kids is definitely not a sane thing to do! (But as you may or not be aware-- crazy people don't always act rationally-- at times they actually do some pretty crazy things-- so it wouldn't surprise me in the least if some crazy people would act in a crazy manner and attacked a "hardened" school).)
This is just more evidence that all the background check ideas in the world won't work if the people charged with carrying them out don't want them to work. This was the case with the SC race murderer, Dylann Roof. When he bought his pistol, the FBI received the background check request and requested records from SC law enforcement. SC had never submitted information the the FBI data base that Roof had been arrested for and admitted to a drug related crime. That would have prevented him from being able to purchase any firearm. It seems that in heavily pro-gun states (SC, FL) there's not a lot interest in going along with the background check process.
Especially after today when an armed teacher barricaded himself in a classroom and fired his gun when someone tried to unlock the door.
President Trump on Thursday defended his call to arm some teachers as a way to stop a “savage sicko” from causing mass casualties, while also calling for gun control measures -- including raising the age for purchasing firearms to 21.
Trump continually says he'll do something--than at the last minute backs down under pressure from the alt-Right. Remeber how many times he said he'll support "Dreamers"-- then backed down at the last minute. How he promised he would make Mexico "pay for the wall"? and so many more...
So my guess is that he will eventually change his position of raising the age to raising that age limit. (When the NRA tells him to jump, Trump's response is "How high"?)
A Florida gun joke:
Q: Why should AR-15s be renamed "Marco Rubios"?
A: Because they're both so easy to buy!
Everyone seems to be forgetting 'Protect the Children'. We can do that today. Tomorrow may be too late.