President Donald Trump took to Twitter to explain himself Thursday after supporting the controversial stance of arming teachers in the wake of the Florida shooting massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School.
Trump made the comment during an emotional listening session on guns Wednesday that included survivors of the Florida attack.
“If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly,” he said according to CNN reports.
“This would be obviously only for people who were very adept at handling a gun, and it would be, it’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They’d go for special training and they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone,” Trump said. “Gun-free zone to a maniac — because they’re all cowards — a gun-free zone is ‘let’s go in and let’s attack because bullets aren’t coming back at us.”
But after social media backlash, the president explained his view further in a series of gun control tweets he shared Thursday morning.
“I never said ‘give teachers guns’,” Trump tweeted. “What I said was to look at the possibility of giving concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience – only the best.”
He also said that he would work to raise the minimum age of buyers to 21, to create tougher background checks that screen for mental health, and to end the sale of bump stocks.