Trump: We’ll Look at Concealed Carry for Trained School Staffers ‘Very Strongly’ – ‘Could Very Well Solve Your Problem’

During a listening session at the White House on Wednesday, President Trump stated that he will look at allowing trained teachers and staffers or veterans to conceal carry firearms on school grounds “very strongly” and offered some praise for the idea.

Trump said that concealed carry on campus “only works where you have people very adept at using firearms, of which you have many. And it would be teachers and coaches. If the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy — that coach was very brave, saved a lot of lives I suspect — but if he had a firearm, he wouldn’t have had to run. He would have shot and that would have been the end of it. And this would only be, obviously, for people that are very adept at handling a gun. And it would be, it’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They’d go for special training. And they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone. Gun-free zone to a maniac…is let’s go in, and let’s attack. Because bullets aren’t coming back at us. And if you do this, and a lot of people are talking about it, and it’s certainly a point that we’ll discuss, but concealed carry for teachers and for people of talent — of that type of talent.”

He later added that a teacher who could handle a firearm “could very well end the attack very quickly. And the good thing about a suggestion like that, and we’re going to be looking at it very strongly, and I think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it. I think a lot of people are going to like it, but the good thing is that you’ll have a lot of people with that. You know, you can’t have 100 security guards in Stoneman Douglas. That’s a big school. It’s a massive school, with a lot of acreage to cover, a lot of floor area. And so, that would be, certainly, a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people. You’d have a lot of people that’d be armed. They’d be ready. They’re professionals. They may be Marines that left the Marines, left the Army, left the Air Force, and they’re very adept at doing that. You’d have a lot of them, and they’d be spread evenly throughout the school. So, the other thing, I really believe that if these cowards knew that the school was well-guarded, from the standpoint of having, pretty much, professionals with great training, I think they wouldn’t go into the school to start off with. I think it could very well solve your problem. So, we’ll be doing the background checks. We’ll be doing a lot of different things. But we’ll certainly be looking at ideas like that.”

Trump concluded, “[W]e can understand both sides. And certainly, it’s controversial. But we’ll study that, along with many other ideas.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett