Liberal Chaos: Guess Who Agreed With Trump on Arming School Staff... Obama! In 2013!
You’re crazy if you think armed school staff can be part of the solution to stop mass shootings.
That’s the message being repeated by Democrats and the mainstream media right now, at least. However, it turns out that a familiar liberal face was all for “good guys with guns” in schools back in 2013: Barack Obama.
Yes, after the tragedy that took place in Newtown, Connecticut five years ago, President Obama directed his Justice Department to put armed staff members in schools as part of a multi-layered proposal.
“We won’t be able to stop every violent act, but if there is even one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation — all of us — to try,” Obama declared at the time.
“To that end, the Justice Department allocated $45 million to create 1,000 school resource officers who would be ‘specially trained’ to work in schools and expand mental health personnel,” reported PJ Media.
Even former Attorney General Eric Holder — hardly an NRA ally himself — suggested trying anything and everything to protect children… including using armed school staff members.
“In the wake of past tragedies, it’s clear that we need to be willing to take all possible steps to ensure that our kids are safe when they go to school,” he stated.
Unsurprisingly, the Obama-backed proposals back in 2013 were also heavy on “soft” solutions like mental health counselors. At the same time, it was clear that armed school personnel were key to the plan.
“According to guidelines released by the White House in advance of Obama’s speech Wednesday, schools that want to have armed guards will be supported in that pursuit,” The Huffington Post reported in January of 2013.
“The White House says it will ‘provide incentives’ for police departments to train and hire these special officers. The Department of Justice will tweak the COPS Hiring Grants, which is already used by police departments to recruit new talent, to incentivize police departments to employ more school-specific officers,” HuffPo continued.
So why didn’t it work? One of the reasons was numbers: There just weren’t enough armed staff members to cover all schools.
“1,000 school resource officers … was only a drop in the bucket, of course, considering there are about 98,000 public schools in the United States. But, it sounded good,” explained PJ Media. As we sadly found out in Florida, an armed first responder is useless if he isn’t in the right place — or if he refuses to even enter the school during an emergency.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway here is that the current Democrat narrative seems to be based not on principles, but on undermining conservatives at every turn. The same people who thought armed school staff could make a difference in 2013 are now openly mocking any Republican who suggests the same thing, just five years later.
Barack Obama’s proposal half a decade ago was actually pretty solid. Making sure that schools are not unguarded, defenseless targets is a good idea, and one that we should be pursuing right now.
Frustratingly, this shows exactly how out of touch and increasingly leftist Democrats have become in just a few short years. What their own side supported as “common sense” has now been thrown out the window in favor of trashing the Second Amendment and painting lawful gun owners as murderers.
Armed and trained teachers, staff members, and resource officers may not be a magic solution… but they can be part of the answer to saving lives. Even “common sense” Democrats know this… but that sense is becoming increasingly less “common” every day.
Press “Share on Facebook” if you’re fed up with conservatives being demonized by the same people who once agreed with them!
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