by Kimberly Greulich ’18

Whether you believe it’s the gun that makes the danger or the person, the fact remains: a gun is a hard weapon to handle. The capability to actively take potentially lethal action against another person is difficult to achieve, especially for compassionate and caring individuals.

Like most teachers, who care about their students and want to see them succeed.

However, President Trump is counting on the love these teachers feel for their students to be the core of success for his response to the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida – arming a select number of teachers in schools across the United States.

His idea – referred to in concept as “concealed carry” – involves the select “20% of teachers” who are “very gun adept” receiving secret gun training, he said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on February 23.

Trump’s take on eliminating the “gun free zone” standard at schools will prevent shootings because, according to his speech at the CPAC, “these people are inherently cowards … if this guy thought that other people would be shooting bullets back at him, he wouldn’t have gone to that school.”

The Parkland students protesting the accessibility of guns in America want a different solution to prevent this kind of tragedy from happening ever again. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas are speaking out, taking action, and organizing civil marches and other protests to try to kick the NRA out of the political sphere, and rescue the Florida senate seat up for election in 2018 from its deep pockets.

Reviews on “concealed carry” are mixed – according to a survey by the Huffington Post, “Nearly 70 percent of Republicans said they supported the idea of arming teachers, compared to 20 percent of Democrats.”

Teachers have taken their own stand against the idea and have littered social media with “#ArmMeWith” tweets and Instagram posts about what they would rather the government provide them with than guns.

It seems these responses have gotten to the president’s ears, if his message from televised meeting at the White House on February 28 is anything to go by. To the confusion of many of his party members, Trump said he wanted to raise the age you can buy a gun to 21 and expand background checks. There were only brief allusions to his proposal to arm teachers.