House Majority Whip Steve Scalise endorsed President Trump’s proposal to arm teachers at schools across the U.S., following the recent mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
“As long as they are properly trained, that should be their prerogative,” the Louisiana Republican said during a visit to a local charter school on Friday. “If they don’t want to, they shouldn’t have to. But if they want to, they ought to have that right.”
Scalise himself became a victim of gun violence last June, when an Illinois man targeted a congressional baseball practice. The gunman shot Scalise in the hip, causing the GOP leader to undergo several surgeries, from which he is still recovering.
He and Trump have both backed the idea of allowing school teachers to conceal carry on their campuses and inside classrooms, so long as they have been properly trained in gun safety and firearm use and pass a federal background check.
In the event that a gunman enters school grounds, both men say they believe that armed teachers could be an effective deterrent against a sustained attack.
“If they thought – like, if this guy thought that other people would be shooting bullets back at him, he wouldn’t have gone to that school,” Trump said of the Parkland shooter on Friday. “It says, this is a gun-free zone; please check your guns way far away. And what happens is they feel safe. There’s nobody going to come at them.”
Scalise similarly aligned himself with Trump after the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas last fall. At the time, the GOP leader said he actively opposes a ban of any kind on automatic or semi-automatic weapons.
