Get
Get him, Jay.

On Monday, President Trump met with state governors at the White House. In a hour-long appearance, he rambled about immigration (bad), the economy (good), North Korea (bad), and, one of our nation's more shameful problems: guns, which have become America's battle du jour after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 students and adults at a high school in Parkland, Florida, this month. As Trump was explaining to the governors that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a math teacher with a gun, Jay Inslee, the governor of Washington and a real credit to his state, stood up.

“Speaking as a grandfather, speaking as a governor of the state of Washington, I have listened to the people who would be affected by that,” Inslee said. “I have listened to the biology teachers, and they don’t want to do that at any percentage. I have listened to the first-grade teachers, who don’t want to be pistol-packing first-grade teachers. I have listened to law enforcement, who have said they don’t want to have to train teachers as law enforcement agencies, which takes about six months.

“I just think this is a circumstance where we need to listen," Gov. Inslee continued. "Educators should educate, and they should not be foisted upon this responsibility of packing heat in first-grade classes. Now, I understand you have suggested this, and we suggest things and sometimes then we listen to people about it, and maybe they don’t look so good a little later. So I just suggest we need a little less tweeting, a little more listening.”

Trump, who may need to get his hearing aid adjusted, ignored him and moved on.


Trump's proposal to arm teachers—and give them bonuses for it—is wildly unpopular among students, teachers, parents, law enforcement, voters, etc. Not only are schools under-funded and teachers underpaid in much of the country, a 2013 study found that mass shooters die in nearly half of the attacks studied—38 percent by suicide and 10 percent by "suicide by cop," a term used by law enforcement to describe actions that are intended to provoke a lethal response from police. In Trump's vision of America, suicidal folks could just take a gun (or a toy gun) down to the high school and let the art teacher take care of it. Hard to imagine many future teachers of America would willing to sign up for that.

Trump also said Monday morning that if he had been at the school, he would have run in himself, armed or not. This may be hard to imagine from a 71-year-old adult infant with such severe "bone spurs" that it got him out of military service during the draft, but Parkland was likely (and sadly) not the last school shooting to happen in America's history, so if our "hero" is close by when the inevitable next one happens, he'll get the chance to prove his mettle. Or, more likely, come up short again.