The very stable genius wants schools to lock and load

National Education Association President Lily Eskelsen Garcia said yesterday: “Our students need more books, art and music programs, nurses and school counselors; they do not need more guns in their classrooms …. We need solutions that will keep guns out of the hands of those who want to use them to massacre innocent children and educators. Arming teachers does nothing to prevent that.” And the American Federation of Teachers said: “It’s time for politicians to value children over the gun lobby.” They were joined on Twitter by Dr. Eugene Gu, a surgical resident at Vanderbilt University Medical Center: Bringing more guns into schools “is like saying the solution to lung cancer is to smoke more cigarettes.”

None of this is new. Four years ago, there was a surge of interest in arming teachers; 30 state legislatures weighed bills. Most of those bills died (although seven red states now allow arming), because people with brains talked sense.

The president of the National School Safety and Security Services said: “Suggesting that by providing staff with 8, 16, 40, or even 60 hours of firearms training on firing, handling, and holstering a gun somehow makes a non-law enforcement officer suddenly qualified to provide public safety services is a high risk to the safety of students, teachers, and other school staff.” And a school safety expert with the National Association of Secondary School Principals said: “Teachers are in schools to teach. When you ask them to be security guards, you are distracting them from their jobs. Not one minute of the school day will go by when that teacher isn’t thinking about that weapon he or she is carrying. And what kind of message are we sending the kids? Educators are often their ultimate role model. Some students may think that carrying a weapon is the right thing to do.”

And 30 scientific studies have concluded that more guns leads to more violence, although the stats and graphs will persuade only those Americans who still believe in science.

As for Trump, he doesn’t believe anything in particular — during the 2016 campaign, he said he didn’t want guns brought into the classroom — but he does know what the gun lobby wants. It wants to protect the availability of assault weapons, so yesterday he never raised the issue. The lobby wants to sustain the 22-year-old federal ban on gun violence research, so yesterday he never proposed lifting it. But because the lobby wants more guns in schools — as NRA maestro Wayne LaPierre said today, “Schools must be the most hardened targets in the country” – Trump is all in.

And now that he’s been freed from all those tears and tissues, he’s back on Twitter today with empathy for his true constituency, the one that gave him $30 million in 2016:  “What many people don’t understand, or don’t want to understand, is that…the folks who work so hard at the NRA re Great People and Great American Patriots. They love our Country and will do the right thing. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Yesterday he told the Floridians, “We’re going to do something about this horrible situation that’s going on.” Yeah sure. Not with him we won’t.