President Trump wants to know why there weren’t more martyrs giving their lives during the Parkland shooting on Valentine’s Day.
As have many, the president has been taking continuous aim at Deputy Scot Peterson who was allegedly at the site of the mass shooting but didn’t enter. At a White House meeting (Feb. 26), the president declared that Peterson “choked,” according to NBC News.
He continued that there were no Medal of Honor winners on the school’s campus, attributing the high volume of casualties to the rescue team, teachers, and to those who failed to realize the mental instability of the shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz. “We have to take steps to harden our schools so they’re less vulnerable to attack,” he said. “That includes allowing well-trained and certified school personnel to carry concealed firearms.” He said that the school needs volume because it won’t be able to hire “100 security guards.”
Then Trump declared himself an ex-post facto hero. “You don’t know until you test it but… I really believe I’d run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon,” he stated matter of factly. But it’s too easy to make a theoretical statement for a situation of this nature. The president continued to tweet about missed cues in might-have-been fashion, suggesting that the shooting could have been prevented if the FBI hadn’t been “spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with Trump campaign.”
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/965075589274177536
The proposition for trained personnel is alarming to say the very least. He’d like to give guns to “highly trained people that have a natural talent [for shooting], like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting,” NBC reports.
There was also a call for the return of federal mental institutions. Those unfit to carry the guns or believed to be violent should be hospitalized–the same rule would apply to teachers. Assuming that their mental health is evaluated, who’s to say that it won’t fluctuate?
Trump is allegedly taking action to outlaw bump stocks but not the machines they’re used for. According to White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump “would support a legislative solution.”