EARMUFFS. Trump 'Listens' to School Shooting Survivors, Hears Only NRA
The president held a piece of paper with the words ‘I hear you’ written as a reminder. And yet he heard nothing.
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
SAM STEIN
02.22.18 5:16 AM ET
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On Wednesday, Trump took his prolonged listening tour public. He convened a room full of survivors and family of school shooting victims to, ostensibly, talk about how to protect students from the next massacre. And he kept the cameras rolling.
It was riveting television. But, alas, it was largely pre-scripted for the president. By that point, Trump had already developed his preferred prescription: He would largely toe the gun lobby line, albeit in a kinder, gentler tone.
Speaking before the gathering of the heartbroken and enraged, Trump called for a vague strengthening of the background check system to purchase guns. He proposed beefing up mental health services. But his most audacious proposal was to arm and train teachers to fire back at the next gun-toting intruder.
“If you had a teacher with, who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly,” President Trump said. “And the good thing about a suggestion like that, and we’re going to be looking at it very strongly, I think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it, I think a lot of people are going to like it. But the good thing is you’ll have a lot of people with that.”
Not everything that Trump offered was something the National Rifle Association would find agreeable. He spoke favorably of raising the legal age, to 21, for those who want to purchase rifles—a position that Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera specifically pitched the president on during a dinner the two had at Trump’s club in Mar-a-Lago on Saturday. It’s a proposal the NRA has emphatically come out against.
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