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At today’s “Listening session” at the White House between Trump and several survivors from last week’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, the President predictably touted an NRA talking point, suggesting that we should arm teachers in schools to protect the students and bring even more guns around children.
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Trump: "If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they 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…but the good thing is you'll have a lot of [armed] people with that." pic.twitter.com/wGRSTDK38o
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 21, 2018
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It didn’t take long before actual teachers, who signed up to educate our nation’s youth, not to become complicit in the NRA’s ultimate desire to continue promulgating an armed populace, began to speak out.
I’m a teacher. I don’t want to carry a gun. I want the people responsible for my safety, and my students’ safety, to do their jobs and make our workspace safe.
— Jared Yates Sexton (@JYSexton) February 21, 2018
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I am a teacher. My husband is in the military.
We have no business doing each other's jobs.
— Liz Zimmermann (@whyiamcrazy) February 21, 2018
Teachers do not want to be on the front lines of America’s unique and avoidable crisis in which we seem to value defending our guns over our children. Trump and his party refuse to get to the root of the problem– the ease with which one can purchase a military-grade weapon. Instead, they are pretending that more guns is the solution. If I eat candy every day and end up with 25 cavities, the solution isn’t to get more dental work; it’s to stop eating so much candy. This isn’t a difficult problem.
While the GOP continues its obstinate refusal to act on gun safety in this country, Americans have signaled their utter exasperation with the issue. Midterms are going to deliver an unprecedented blow to this party complicit in the deaths of so many children.
Follow Brian Tyler Cohen on Facebook and Twitter.
