Trump’s Idea of Arming Teachers Is Crazy but Clarifying

the exchanges between Trump, Inslee, and several other governors were overshadowed by the President’s laughable claim that even unarmed, he would have tackled the Parkland school shooter.

.. It vividly illuminates the collective madness that beckons when you have an unprincipled man like Trump in the White House, the G.O.P. in control of Congress and the majority of states

.. Inslee .. brought up a program in his home state that gives the family members of disturbed or depressed individuals the ability to obtain court orders to seize their guns.

.. I have listened to law enforcement who have said they don’t want to have to train teachers as law-enforcement agents, which takes about six months.

.. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, who explained how his state has already adopted a “school-marshal program,”

.. “They will have signs out front, a warning sign that, be aware, there are armed personnel on campus.”

.. Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas and a former U.S. Attorney who once developed a school-safety program for the N.R.A.

.. “Essentially, what you are saying is that when a sick individual comes into that school, they can expect major trouble, right, major trouble. The bullets are going to be going towards him, also. . . . You know what’s going to happen, nobody’s going into that school.”

.. In making this argument, which follows the logic of the jungle, and of failed states like Yemen and Iraq, Trump seemed blissfully, or purposely, unaware of the fact that many school shooters end up shooting themselves, and, therefore, might well be immune to the logic of deterrence. 

  • .. Adam Lanza, who killed twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot himself in the head before the police arrived. Similarly,
  • Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two Columbine shooters, made no effort to escape after carrying out their massacre, and they shot themselves after the police arrived.

.. he asserted that arming educators would be cheaper and more effective than hiring more armed guards, or relying on local police officers, such as the ones who failed to stop Nikolas Cruz at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Florida. “They don’t love the students; they don’t know the students,” Trump said dismissively. “The teachers love the students. They want to protect the students.”

 .. he is putting his own unhinged spin on this decivilizing agenda.
.. “The bad guy has to understand that there is a big price to pay when they mess around with our students. You can’t just say we are going to harden our schools. . . . You have to let people know they are going to suffer the ultimate price. And you know what? And I said it before, you’re not going to have incidents, they are not going to do it because they are innately cowards.”