Last month, after a teenager used an AR-15 to kill 17 people inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, President Trump initially sounded like an advocate for gun control. Trump mentioned raising the age limit to 21 for purchasing weapons like the AR-15 and expanding background checks for buyers. He told one senator, “You’re afraid of the NRA.”This week, Trump threw out those proposals for one the NRA supports: arming teachers. VICE News went to a Broward County teachers union meeting to ask how they’re living with the aftermath of the shooting, and how they would feel about colleagues carrying guns.
Guns in schools, in the hands of trained adults, is an idea that Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos endorsed in an interview that aired Sunday, on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”The idea isn’t new. At least 14 states already arm teachers -- and many more allow it. Florida could become the 15th state to arm teachers, after Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill March 9 that empowers counties to allow school staffers to carry guns. Scott said he wasn’t personally “persuaded” the provision would make schools safer -- and several students told VICE News they hoped Scott would use his line-item veto to nix that particular part of the bill.But Scott signed the bill anyway, and said the program wasn’t mandatory. “If counties don’t want to do it, they can simply say no,” Scott said.In the weeks after the shooting, victims’ families, teachers, and student survivors campaigned hard to convince the gun-friendly Florida legislature to act. The “Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act” limits rifle sales to buyers 21 and over. It expands gun-purchase waiting periods and bans bump stocks like the one used in Las Vegas. The NRA is already suing to have the legislation thrown out.In Stoneman Douglas’s home district, educators say they're behind the students who plan to take part in a national walk out Wednesday, on the one-month anniversary of the Parkland shooting. One Marjory Stoneman Douglas teacher Ernest Rospierski told VICE News, "I'm going to be supporting my former students as much as I can in their fight."Tess Owen and Zoha Qamar contributed reporting.
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