Much like a dog with a bone, the latest thing President Trump refuses to let go of is the highly questionable notion that we should be arming teachers with concealed carry weapons to combat potential school shootings — and even incentivizing those teachers with bonuses. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, Trump pandered to his base by reiterating these remarks, this time using the rationale that school personnel would instinctively protect kids because they “love” their students. (Y’know, except when they don’t.)
He also suggested that a teacher armed with a concealed weapon — such as a small handgun — could have stopped Nikolas Cruz with his AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle.
The teachers, and the coaches, and other people in the building … the dean, the assistant dean, the principal … they can– they love their people, they wanna protect these kids. And I think we’re better with that– and this may be 10 percent or 20 percent of the population of teachers, et cetera, it’s not all of them.
But you would have a lot, and you would tell people that they’re inside. And the beauty is that it’s concealed, nobody would ever see it, unless they needed it. It’s concealed! So this crazy man who walked in wouldn’t even know who it is that has it, that’s good! It’s not bad, it’s good! And a teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.
Overlooking the myriad of glaringly obvious problems with this plan, not the least of which is that a teacher — who is trained in education, not military combat — might shoot the wrong damn kid in the chaos. Case in point, even the SWAT team initially misidentified the shooter, apprehending a student named Lorenzo Prado because he looked similar to Cruz. And that was the SWAT team. Just imagine what a math teacher with a gun could have done.
(Via MSNBC)