Arm the teachers if you are not going to stop mentally ill people.
During the meeting with Parkland students at the White House on Wednesday President Trump said arming teachers is a step that can be taken to make schools less-attractive targets for attackers.
He said that as things stand, attackers have nothing to lose because no one can shoot back.
CNN quoted Trump saying, “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.’” He said adopting a policy where “20 percent” of teachers were armed would reduce or eliminate the perception of weakness, making schools a riskier target to strike.
Trump said, “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.”
Newsweek reports that Trump also emphasized mental health and raising “the minimum age for purchasing a firearm,” but the push for arming teachers took center stage.
Students showed considerable support for the idea of arming teachers. Hunter Pollack, who lost his sister Meadow in the attack, said, “I’m not here to debate, but I lost my sister. And like Mr. President said, if you could find 20% of maybe retired law enforcement officers, or a teacher who could go through discreet training to carry a firearm around his waist, it could’ve been a very different situation.”
President Trump campaigned on allowing teachers to be armed for self-defense. He said gun-free zones provide “target practice for sickos” and, on October 8, 2016, theWashington Post quoted him saying, “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools.”
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He preened with guns and knives on social media, bragged about shooting rats with his BB gun and got kicked out of school — in part because he had brought bullets in his backpack, according to one classmate. He was later expelled for still-undisclosed disciplinary reasons.
The portrait of Nikolas Cruz, suspected of fatally shooting 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland and wounding 15 others at his former school, is a troubled teen with few friends and an obsessive interest in weapons. Administrators considered him enough of a potential threat that one teacher said a warning was emailed last year against allowing him on the campus with a backpack.
Parkland school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz arrives at Broward County Jail on Thursday, February 15, 2018. Reliable News Media
Late Wednesday, detectives were digging into the past of the 19-year-old who had no previous arrests but had displayed plenty of troubling behavior before officers took him into custody after what ranks as the third-deadliest school shooting in American history.
“Our investigators began dissecting social media,” Broward Sheriff Scott Israel told reporters. “Some of the things thatcome to mind are very, very disturbing.”
Cruz, who was arrested soon after the shooting and taken to BSO headquarters, could face multiple state charges of first-degree murder and attempted murder.
At Stoneman Douglas High, he was part of the Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps during his freshman year, classmates said. Charo said he spoke little and “was into some weird stuff.”
“He used to tell me he would shoot rats with his BB gun and he wanted this kind of gun, and how he liked to always shoot for practice,” Charo said.
Cruz’s Instagram page, identified by friends as his but which has since been removed from the popular site, underscored his love of weapons.
In the images, he sported dark bandanas over his face and beanies and baseball caps on his head.In one post, he wielded knives between his fingers as though they were claws. In another, he showed off a small black handgun.
“Pistol fun a– f–k” he wrote in that post.
One post on his Instagram was for an online ad for a Mossberg Maverick 88 slug shotgun. Another post showed the definition of “Allahu Akbar” — an Arabic phrase meaning God is great. Federal authorities, however, said Wednesday that they did not believe the shooting was connected to terrorism.
On Wednesday, police said, he was armed with an AR-15 rifle.
Friends said he spoke little of his relatives. He and his brother were adopted when they were young by Lynda and Roger Cruz, of Long Island, New York, according to relatives. They raised the boys in Parkland.
Roger Cruz died over a decade ago and Lynda struggled with the boys, said Barbara Kumbatovich, a former sister-in-law. “She did the best she could. They were adopted and had some emotional issues,” she said.
Kumbatovich said she believed Nikolas Cruz was on medication to deal with his emotional fragility. “She was struggling with Nikolas the last couple years,” she said.
After his mother died, Cruz moved in with a friend, whose family in Broward took him in and even gave him own bedroom. He worked at a dollar store and went to a school for at-risk youth, said Fort Lauderdale attorney Jim Lewis, who is representing the family.
Cruz had his AR-15, but the family asked that gun remain locked up in a cabinet, Lewis said. On Wednesday morning, Cruz slept in and gave only a cryptic reason why.
“He said, ‘It’s Valentine’s Day and I don’t go to school on Valentine’s Day,’” Lewis said.
The family had no idea what was going to happen, Lewis said. “Nobody saw this coming,” Lewis said. “They’re shocked.”
Charo, his former classmate, said Cruz had earlier been suspendedfrom Stoneman Douglas High for fighting — and also because he was found with bullets in his backpack. Sheriff Israel said at a news conference that Cruz had been expelled for “disciplinary reasons” but he did not provide any details of what led to that action.
Math teacher Jim Gard remembered that the school administration earlier sent out an email warning teachers about Cruz.
“We were told last year that he wasn’t allowed on campus with a backpack on him,” said Gard, who had him in class. “There were problems with him last year threatening students, and I guess he was asked to leave campus.”
Drew Fairchild, a Stoneman Douglas High student stranded at the Marriott Heron Bay, where students were taken after the shooting, said he shared a class with Cruz during their freshman year.
“He used to have weird, random outbursts, cursing at teachers,” Fairchild said. “He was a troubled kid.”
The parent of another student agreed, saying his son, Daniel, had warned him about Cruz.
“If you were to pick one person you might predict in the future would shoot up a school or do this, it would be this kid,” said John Crescitelli, quoting his son.
Superintendent Robert Runcie told reporters on Wednesday afternoon that he did not know of any concerns raised about the student. “We received no warnings,” Runcie said. “Potentially there could have been signs out there. But we didn’t have any warning or phone calls or threats that were made.”
Runcie, citing federal student privacy laws, declined to discuss the suspect’s school record. But he confirmed that Cruz was still a Broward schools student, despite having been kicked out of Stoneman Douglas High.
Another former classmate, Nicholas Coke, called Cruz a “loner” who left the school and moved away a few months ago. Coke said he recalls an incident in middle school when Cruz kicked out a glass window and ran out of his classroom before getting caught.
“He had a lot of problems in middle school,” Coke said. “You never think anyone you know is going to do something like this.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel stopped by “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Monday night to declare Chicago a “Trump-free zone.”
It was Emanuel’s first appearance on the show since Colbert took over for David Letterman in 2015, and he took the opportunity to escalate his criticisms of President Donald Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration policy.
“Our motto: A city he’ll never sleep in. We don’t want him,” Emanuel said to kick off his segment.
Colbert questioned the enforcement of that rule, particularly with “a Trump hotel right on the river there,” to which the mayor touted his record of opposing the Trump administration.
Emanuel mentioned free community college for students, including so-called DREAMers, who maintain at least a B average in high school, suing the Environmental Protection Agency over U.S. Steel dumping in Lake Michigan, as well as the recent adoption of climate change policies by mayors from around the world at a summit in Chicago.
“Look, Donald Trump is driving forward looking through the rearview mirror and I’m not going that way because I want my city going that way,” he said, gesturing forward, “and I want it to be a Trump-free zone.”
These Peaceful Guys Are Welcome Because They Are On Their Way To College.
“He really, never really likes it when I do that though,” Emanuel added.
Colbert then questioned Chicago’s status as a “sanctuary city,” a term used for jurisdictions that do not detain undocumented immigrants arrested on charges unrelated to their immigration status and turn them over to federal authorities for possible deportation.
“How is that not sort of a constitutional crisis?” Colbert asked.
Emanuel deflected at first, returning to a familiar anecdote about the arrival of his immigrant grandfather in Chicago 100 years ago, proclaiming that the city that welcomed his ancestors and made him mayor is “the greatest city in the greatest country in the world.”
“That doesn’t necessarily answer my question,” Colbert pushed back. “I’m all for what you’re doing, but I’m just curious how it doesn’t violate federal law for you to do this.”
“Because the police department in the city of Chicago is not supposed to be enforcing the immigration laws of the United States government. That’s what the federal government is for,” Emanuel responded, adding that stricter enforcement of immigration laws would counteract his work “building relationships between the police department and communities” – an area that has been the subject of intense scrutiny and structural reform in the wake of high-profile police shootings like that of Laquan McDonald in 2014.
“I’m not driving a wedge – that is what Donald Trump wants, is a wedge on the philosophy of community policing,” Emanuel told Colbert. “It’s absolutely antithetical to everything we’re trying to do.”
The duo then delved into a rapid-fire question game called “Fast Round” from the mayor’s podcast “Chicago Stories.”
Emanuel chose Cubs over Sox, thick crust over thin, Hancock over Sears, then (begrudgingly) Willis over Sears, lake over river and 16-inch softball over 12 – a Chicago summer tradition that Colbert said “looks like the moon is eclipsing when it comes at you.”
Colbert’s final question for Emanuel centered on Trump’s declaration last week that the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, asking why the presidents Emanuel worked for (Obama and Bill Clinton) didn’t do it before him.
“First of all, no Democrat or Republican president would ever do this,” the mayor said, calling it “bad policy.”
“The fact is, for a whole host of reasons, you do not want the United States in the middle of negotiations about a two-state solution,” Emanuel continued. “You know, my father is from Israel, I’ve been to Israel, my son’s been Bar Mitzvahed there. This is not what a president should be doing.”
Emanuel landed one final dig at Trump, saying his “bigger worry is that he’s not also moving the nation’s capital to Alabama and I’m really more concerned about what he’s doing there,” in a reference to the high-stakes, contentious race to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ former Senate seat.
Congress to vote on Trump- and NRA-backed bill to remove local gun restrictions
Legislation would force all states to recognize gun-carrying permits from any other state and faces challenges in the Senate, but is expected to pass the House
On the day of an annual vigil in Washington DC that honors the victims of American gun violence, congressional Republicans are expected to vote on a Trump-endorsed bill that would eviscerate local gun restrictions, removing states’ power to control who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded handguns in their streets.
Officials in New York and Los Angeles warn that the legislation would allow an unknown numbers of tourists – perhaps hundreds of thousands each year – to carry concealed handguns into America’s densest urban areas, including Times Square and the New York City subway. Big city police chiefs across the county have spoken out against the bill, calling it a law enforcement enforcement nightmare.
The bill, which is the National Rifle Association’s “number one legislative priority” has prompted a renewed battle over states’ rights, with Democrats for once arguing against the power of the federal government, and Republicans hoping to use that federal power to undermine local control.
The NRA-backed legislation would force all states to recognize gun-carrying permits from any other state, including the dozen states that generally do not require any training or permit to carry a gun, a policy called “constitutional carry”.
West Virginia’s choice to allow “constitutional carry” of concealed handguns “might be fine for West Virginia, but it’s not fine for New York City”, said Cy Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney. “I wouldn’t presume to tell West Virginia, as a New Yorker, what West Virginia’s laws should be with regard to gun possession. Can you imagine how mad they’d be?”
Donald Trump endorsed the legislation during his campaign last year.
The bill faces an uphill battle in the Senate, but it expected to pass the Republican-controlled House easily on Wednesday, the same day that gun violence survivors, including residents of Newtown, Connecticut, will be visiting congressional offices to ask politicians, once again, to take some action on gun control.
Nearly five years after the 2012 Newtown school shooting, which left 26 children and educators dead, Congress has yet to pass any gun control laws.
“We have nothing but heartache and compassion for the victims of Sandy Hook, but concealed carry reciprocity has nothing to do with this tragedy,” said Tatum Gibson, a spokesperson for Richard Hudson, the North Carolina Republican congressman who introduced the legislation, said in a statement when asked about the timing of the vote.
“I don’t know that putting the NRA’s agenda on the floor of the House is the right way to mark five years since Sandy Hook,” Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, one of the leading Democratic gun control advocates, told the Guardian. “It is heartbreaking to think as we come up to the fifth anniversary of Newtown, Republicans in the House are pushing through a bill to make our country less safe.”
Republicans’ attempt to tear down local restrictions on gun carrying comes just weeks after two of America’s deadliest mass shootings, at a country music concert in Las Vegas and a tiny church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. The move highlights the stark divide in Americans’ opinions on guns, with some conservatives seeing increased civilian gun carrying as a way to prevent or lessen the toll of mass shootings, even as many other Americans are trying to fight against America’s gun-carrying culture and get guns off the street.
Under current law, states have dramatically different standards for who is allowed to carry a concealed, loaded weapon. A handful of more liberal states give law enforcement officials discretion when granting a carry permit and some require that applicants demonstrate a specific need for self-defense. But the majority of states make it easy for citizens to get a carry license. While some states require that permit holders demonstrate proficiency with a gun at a firing range, others only require some kind of gun safety course. In Virginia, applicants don’t even need to leave the house: it’s possible to get a concealed carry license after taking a gun safety course online.
Many states currently recognize each other’s carry permits, in the same way states recognize each other’s driver’s licenses, but some states pick and choose which licenses they will honor, and a few states, including New York, recognize no outside permits at all.
Gun rights advocates say the current patchwork of state laws governing gun carrying is confusing for law-abiding gun owners, and that American states and cities with the toughest gun control laws are violating Americans’ constitutional right to carry firearms for self defense.
Opponents of the legislation say the right way to fix the confusion over differing regulations is to create a uniform national standard for training and eligibility, not simply force the states with the toughest gun control regulations to allow the most untrained, unvetted gun carriers to walk their streets.
Adam Winkler, a gun law expert at the University of California Los Angeles, said the legislation the House is currently considering would also allow local residents in cites with tough restrictions to do an end run around local laws, and get their permit to carry a gun from another state with weaker laws. One of the proposed Democratic amendments to the bill would close that loophole.
An estimated three million Americans report carrying a loaded handgun on a daily basis, and an estimated nine million report doing so on a monthly basis, according to a recent study based on a survey conducted by Harvard and Northeastern researchers.
New York City has 46 million domestic visitors a year, said Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney. If the legislation passed and even a small percentage of those tourists brought their guns with them, “We’re talking about a likelihood of hundreds of thousands of guns coming into New York City each year from states with little or no requirements for gun ownership.”
If passed, the legislation “would escalate the danger for residents every day,” Los Angeles city attorney Mike Feuer said.
“The fact that the same people who promote states’ rights and local control would be trying to ramrod this bill through Congress – this bill that undermines states’ rights at every turn, that eviscerates common sense protections in states throughout the United States – it’s the height of hypocrisy.”
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The United Kingdom’s National Ballistics Intelligence Service (NABIS) is conducting a new gun surrender program from Nov. 13 to Nov. 26 after gun crime in England and Wales increased by more than a quarter in the past year.
The Office for National Statistics found a 27 percent increase in crimes involving firearms during its most recent review of crime data. Despite a near ban on the civilian ownership of handguns the review found crimes committed with handguns increased by 25 percent and accounted for the majority of gun crimes. The agency said the increases in 2016 were part of a multiyear trend.
“The latest rise continues an upward trend seen in firearms offences in the last few years, however, offences are still 31 percent below a decade ago,” the most recent annual report from the agency said. “Over the last year, over two-thirds (32 of the 439) of police forces recorded a rise in offences involving firearms.”
NABIS cited the statistics as part of the reason it decided to undertake a new gun surrender program this month.
“Police forces across the U.K. are appealing for people to hand over any unwanted guns with a two week surrender of firearms and ammunition, starting on Monday 13 November 2017,” a release from NABIS said. “It has been three years since the last national firearms surrender, when forces again asked members of the public to surrender unlawfully held or unwanted guns and ammunition to prevent them from getting into criminal hands.”
Detective Chief Superintendent Jo Chilton, the head of NABIS, said the mandatory gun surrender program is intended to protect the public.
“Surrendering unwanted or illegal firearms avoids the risk of them becoming involved in crime and means that members of the community can dispose of them in a safe place,” he said. “During the campaign this November you can contact your local force and hand in any unwanted or illegal firearms. This way you can be confident you have got rid of a firearm safely.”
Though illegal possession of a firearm in the U.K. can carry a prison sentence of five years and possession with intent to supply can carry a life sentence, those who turn in firearms during the gun surrender program won’t be prosecuted. The last gun surrender program in 2014 garnered more than 6,000 items despite coming decades after the U.K.’s first series of gun bans were passed into law.
David Jamieson, the police and crime commissioner for the West Midlands area, urged citizens to turn over their guns and their family members’ guns to the government.
“In common with PCCs across the country I am pleased to be supporting the national firearms surrender,” he said. “I would urge people to hand in their guns. Any firearm in the wrong hands can have a devastating impact. It is no exaggeration to say that each gun we retrieve has the potential to save a life. If you or a family member possess an illegal or unwanted firearm please hand it in to the police. It might just be the best decision you ever make. Destroying these firearms will make us all safer.”
The National Rifle Association criticized the efforts of the U.K. government to curb gun crime through gun bans and mandatory gun surrender programs as ineffective.
“Anti-gun advocates like Gun Control Network Chair Gillian Marshall-Andrews tout the United Kingdom’s longstanding firearms restrictions, which include a near total ban on handguns, as the ‘gold standard’ of gun control,” the NRA wrote on its Institute for Legislative Action website. “In recent years, U.K. officials have continued to implement new policies that further burden law abiding gun owners. These include surprise inspections of gun owners’ firearm storage arrangements, the use of centralized firearm owner licensing data to target ‘terrorists,’ and intrusive medical monitoring of firearm certificate holders.
A New Mexico gas station clerk is mad as hell after being suspended from her job for shooting an armed robber this week, according to a report.
Jennifer Wertz, an employee at the Circle K store in Albuquerque, says she was suspended for two weeks for opening fire on a man who pulled a gun on her Monday night during her shift, KOAT Action 7 News reported.
“He pointed the gun at my face, I grabbed my gun from my pocket, I cocked it and I shot,” Wertz told the news outlet.
Wertz said she had her gun on her Monday because she was slated to work until 10 p.m. and often feels unsafe walking to her car at night.
She says she put her gun in her pocket after she heard that a nearby convenience store was knocked off.
Wertz told the news outlet that robberies happen all the time at gas stations and workers are ordered not to defend themselves.
“We are not to chase or provoke. We are just supposed to stand there and give them what they want and they leave,” she said.
When Wertz was asked why she didn’t abide by those orders Monday, she responded, “I’m sick and tired of being a sitting duck,” according to the report.
Management at Circle K did not respond to a request for comment by KOAT.
Police say the 23-year-old suspect, identified as Ferron Mendez, was struck once in the torso and is expected to survive.
He will be formally charged after he’s released from the hospital.
