After the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, there has been a fierce debate about what action to take to prevent such an atrocity from happening again. The surviving students have demanded new gun control legislation, which is always difficult since so many lawmakers accept millions of dollars from The NRA. Others have suggested focusing on mental health, since the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, 19, was so clearly mentally disturbed.
President Trump has said that he is in favor of stronger background checks and increasing the age requirement to buy a rifle to 21. He has also floated the idea of arming more teachers in schools, which has gotten savage criticism from teachers, an army veteran and even Samuel L. Jackson. "If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly," insisted the President, during a listening session with the surviving students.
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School actually did have a school protection officer, Scot Peterson. He was armed with a handgun but failed to prevent Cruz's attack. In fact, while Cruz was shooting students and teachers, he just waited outside. When this was revealed, he resigned from the job. Reportedly three police officers also waited outside, and did not take action until backup arrived. In response to these claims of negligence, the Broward County Sheriff’s office has launched an investigation.
Cruz entered the school with an AR-15, which he purchased legally, and killed 17 people, while wounding 15. Many students ran out of the school. Others who were not close to an exit barricaded themselves in closets to hide. The assistant football coach, Aaron Feis, heroically shielded students from the gunfire, saving their lives, and later died from a gunshot wound. If the teachers were armed, it's possible they could have stopped Cruz' rampage, but it's also possible there would have been more casualties in the chaos.
However, President Trump is pretty confident about how he would have acted in the situation. In a meeting with the governors, he suggested that he would have stormed inside like John McClane and fought Cruz himself. "You don’t know until you test it, but I really believe I’d have run in there even if I didn’t have a weapon," said Trump. "And I think most of the people in this room would have done that too, because I know most of you. But the way [the first armed police] performed was a disgrace."
Critics expressed skepticism that Trump would act so bravely. During the Vietnam War, he had multiple military deferments, and cited "bone spurs" on his feet to get out of service. Also, he's 71, and according to his latest physical, one pound away from being obese, thanks to a steady diet of fast food. When's the last time he ran anywhere? It's easy to say how you would act in a situation, but you don't really know until it happens. However, Trump has always been the opposite of modest, constantly claiming to be "the most" this and "the best" that so I guess this statement isn't very surprising.
