Trump floats two-step plan for gun control: More guns, more control

And there are a number of steps we can take right now – including ensuring mental health services are widely available; staffing schools with well-trained resource officers, who may be armed if a community so decides; instituting wider background checks; and banning military-style assault weapons and munitions.

He also pushed hard for arming security guards and many teachers in USA schools.

The President was speaking nine days after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida in which 17 people were killed by teenage gunman Nikolas Cruz. “So, I would like to see true people with great talent at guns, being adept at guns, of which there are only a percentage of people, but whatever that percentage is, it is a substantial number, because you can not hire enough security guards”, said President Trump.

At an hourlong meeting on school safety with 10 state and local officials, Trump said armed teachers with an aptitude for guns would deter would-be shooters.

In most U.S. states, the age limit for purchasing the AR-15 rifle is 18 years, while the age limit for handguns is 21 years.

The president said he has spoken with Republican congressional leaders – Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. – about actions to promote school safety.

“We must immediately harden our schools”, he said.

Trump echoed a common National Rifle Association argument that a good guy with a gun would have stopped a bad guy with a gun as he addressed a rowdy crowd of right-wing activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington.

In a morning tweetstorm, Trump forcefully defended the proposal he floated a day earlier in a meeting with survivors of last week’s Parkland shooting – but which is strongly opposed by teachers’ unions, and numerous lawmakers from both camps. It’s just not right, and we need to come together as a country and work on what’s important, and that’s protecting our children in the schools. “The whole idea from some of our opponents that armed security makes us less safe is completely ridiculous”.

Melissa Falkowski, a teacher at Stoneman Douglas who hid students in her classroom while the shooting was taking place, called the proposal “ridiculous”. “I said this today, I said this last night”. In his view, the solution includes pay bonuses for teachers willing to pack weapons.

Highly trained teachers, he continued, would also serve as a “deterrent to the cowards that do this”. Seventeen students were killed when a former student walked onto the premises and opened fire using an AR-15 rifle.

The school plans an orientation on Sunday for teachers and students, and to restart classes on Wednesday. “How many schools, how many children have to get shot?”

That was the day after he was confronted at a CNN town hall by Parkland students and parents over his pro-gun votes and support from the NRA. And I don’t understand why I can still go in a store and buy a weapon of war.

“I’m not saying you love the tragedy”.

Joseph Connelly, a high school physics and chemistry teacher, took to Twitter to argue against the idea.

“I wouldn’t want to tell my son that you’re going to participate in an active shooter drill”, he said. “You have to have a certain degree of offensive power within the school”. Frankly, they’d feel more comfortable having the gun anyway, but you give them a little bit of a bonus.

“It might save a teacher’s life, save students’ lives and potentially avert a situation that is happening at the moment”, Hardman said.

Given that history alone, I don’t believe the president will be a man of his word.