After sitting with parents, students, and teachers to discuss the issue of mass shootings, Trump is very angry that the news is reporting the exact solutions that he offered. His solutions are ineffective and designed to sell more guns, but that wasn’t what Trump was hoping everyone would report.
What is the solution to gun violence? More guns! A gun in every classroom racks up a lot of sales for the NRA. Not only do the majority of teachers not want to carry firearms in rooms full of children or be combat trained in order to teach, it’s a solution that creates more problems and in spite of Trump’s all-caps declarations, it isn’t a deterrent. Mass shooters know that it’s most likely that they’ll end up dead; the shooter who survived to be arrested in Parkland is an anomaly, not a norm.
Trump’s solutions also go a long way toward perpetuating the myths around mass gun violence. Raising the age to purchase guns to 21 is not a bad idea because it would reduce the number of guns being sold overall, but it doesn’t address the problem of mass shootings. The average age of a mass shooter is 35. Like many others, Trump wants to point to mental illness as the reason for mass shootings when the connection between the two has not been proven and examples abound that prove the connection is being made erroneously. Every nation, including every developed nation, has mentally ill citizens. Only the United States has the enormous numbers of mass shootings that we have. Women in the United States proportionately experience mental illness, yet only men commit mass shootings. The issue is not mental illness, although it is certain that every mass shooter is mentally ill. The issue here, the one that Trump, the GOP, and their NRA donors do not want to address, is guns.
Further, the solution does little to address gun violence and mass shooting overall. If mass shootings only happened in schools, or if our children never went anywhere other than school, armed guards and teachers with guns would sound (to some) like some sort of solution. However, mass shootings happen at concerts and in churches. To truly keep children safe, a broader solution has to be found.
Twitter made their voices heard on this issue. See some of their best responses below:
Featured image via Getty/Bloomberg
