Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) broke with President Donald Trump on Wednesday night during a CNN town hall discussion on school shootings with the survivors of last week’s massacre in Parkland, Florida, saying that he was not “comfortable” with arming teachers to prevent attacks.
“I don’t support that, and I would admit to you right now, I answer that as much as a father as I do as a senator,” Rubio said, responding to a question about whether he would support a move to train teachers and staff to conceal carry at school. The inquiry came from a Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School teacher who sheltered students in her classroom last week when a former student opened fire on the school, killing 17 people.
“The notion that my kids are going to school with teachers that are armed with a weapon is not something that, quite frankly, I’m comfortable with,” he said.
Rubio said the move would have “practical problems” that would be “about the safety of the teacher as much as anyone else.” He said if a teacher were to pull out a gun in an active shooter situation to protect students, a SWAT team could mistake the teacher for the attacker.
“As a father and someone who has talked to plenty of teachers, including the three in my family and the assistant principal in my family, I don’t think that would be a good idea in my view,” he said.
While Rubio rejected the idea Wednesday evening, Trump indicated on Wednesday afternoon that arming teachers or school staff members “could very well solve your problems.” Trump was speaking to parents and student survivors of school shootings during a listening session at the White House.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Rubio is not alone in his discomfort with Trump’s idea. The American Federation of Teachers told the Associated Press on Wednesday that arming educators was “one of the worst ideas I have heard in a series of really, really, really bad ideas,” union President Randi Weingarten said.
Of course Trump rushed to the Twitter machine and said he never said we should give teachers guns, what are you crazy, how dare you. He said we should give guns to teachers—wait for it—who are “gun adept,” see, the ones who would do school-based gun battles real good. Because that’s not giving guns to teachers. If you were a stable genius you’d understand that.
And now I’m going to look away because a person has a limit.
I’ll be surprised if Spineless Marco holds this position 24 hours before backing away.
Just ban schools. No more school-shootings. Simple.
Don’t be so hard on poor Marco. He’s tried nothing and he’s all out of ideas.
OK, Marco, you’ve said what you’re not for. And I agree with your position on not arming school staff - that won’t fix anything, is opposed by most educators (Betsy DeVos is not an educator), and would actually make things worse. But, what are you for? What actions are you willing to take to try to stop gun violence in this country? I would do what has been shown to be effective in other countries - make the sale to and the continued possession of assault weapons by private citizens illegal. Take those weapons away. And also deal with universal background checks for all gun and ammo sales, ban high capacity magazines, provide better access to mental health treatment and do not let unstable/disturbed people have any gun. But, that’s me. I’m going to guess that you will take, shall we say, a much more limited approach.