Trump Does Want to Arm Teachers After All

By Paul Blest, Splinter

12 March 18

he Trump administration will reportedly propose that states should arm teachers, less than three weeks after the President proposed it as a solution to school shootings and then denied it, and less than two weeks after a Georgia teacher was arrested after barricading himself inside of a classroom with a gun.

According to a Wall Street Journal report on Sunday, the Trump administration’s plan for responding to the Parkland shooting will be to recommend that states should move to allow school staff to carry guns, and raise the the minimum age to buy “certain firearms.” The proposal will also reportedly solidify Trump’s support for banning bump stocks, a day after the Justice Department submitted a regulation to do just that.

Last week, a Florida gun control package signed by Gov. Rick Scott featured all three of these components. The National Rifle Association filed a lawsuit against the state over the minimum age requirement within 24 hours.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that two “non-finalized” elements of the plan are a “task force to study gun violence and school-safety issues,” as well as “federal grant money that could be used to reward states that find a way approve concealed-carry permits for school workers.” You read that right: federal money might be used as an incentive to get states to put guns in their schools.

Since the mid-nineties, Congress has effectively stripped the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of its ability to research gun violence, out of a fear that the CDC’s research may lead to more calls for gun control. One might think that changing this would be a better place to start if Trump were serious about tackling gun violence, but it’s probably safer for everyone involved if we just turn classrooms into a prison instead.

Score one more in the “Take Trump seriously, not literally” column.

UPDATE, 03/11/2018, 8:01 P.M ET: The plan has been released, and CNN notes that, contrary to the Wall Street Journal report, it doesn’t include a proposal to raise the minimum age to buy “certain firearms.” What it does propose is a “Federal Commission on School Safety” and giving “specially qualified” school personnel guns, as well as a “see something, say something”-style awareness campaign.