President Donald Trump is touting his plan to push federal funding to programs which would arm and train teachers in schools, in a Monday tweet.
If schools are mandated to be gun free zones, violence and danger are given an open invitation to enter. Almost all school shootings are in gun free zones. Cowards will only go where there is no deterrent!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 12, 2018
Providing funding for programs which arm teachers is central to a White House plan announced Sunday in response to a February school shooting in Parkland, Florida. Trump will also create a special commission on school safety headed by his secretary of education Betsy DeVos which will study raising the minimum age for buying guns to 21.
Trump has strongly endorsed arming teachers in schools since the Parkland shooting, at one point saying, “We have to harden our schools, not soften them up,” adding that gun free zones are like “going in for the ice cream” for potential school shooters. “If you harden the sites you’re not going to have this problem… When you say this school is gun free… That’s what they want to hear.”