It is a silly and lazy proposal to a serious problem, and , more importantly, it is straight from the NRA playbook. Not surprisingly, trump is parroting this talking point.
Teachers have a hard enough job trying to TEACH. Why are we giving them the added responsibility of being armed protectors. There are already people in society who we train and pay to do that. They are called police officers. Giving some poor English teacher a few hours of firearm training and sending him out there to stop the next mass shooter is ridiculous. Teachers don't want a bonus for firearm training, they want bonuses for helping their students learn.
The NRA wants everyone to have a gun. Preachers. Teachers. Nurses. Doctors. Everybody. More guns means more membership dues, and more people spending money. It doesn't mean a safer society. That notion that a "good guy with a gun beats a bad guy with a gun" was recently debunked in Parkland, Florida. This good guy with a gun did nothing. I suspect that what we say happen in Parkland (the school police officer stayed outside rather than confront the shooter) would be the norm with this half-brained idea.
"These people are cowards. They're not going to walk into a school if 20% of the teachers have guns -- it may be 10% or may be 40%. And what I'd recommend doing is the people that do carry, we give them a bonus. We give them a little bit of a bonus," Trump said. "They'll frankly feel more comfortable having the gun anyway. But you give them a little bit of a bonus."
The head of the teachers union had a different take.
"Teachers don't want to be armed," "We want to teach. We don't want to be, and would never have the expertise needed to be, sharp shooters; no amount of training can prepare an armed teacher to go up against an AR-15."
* Pic from patch.com
