Trump school safety proposal to call for armed staff and raising gun-buying age
President will call for minimum age for buying certain guns to be raised to 21, days after the NRA sued Florida over a similar plan
Donald Trump will propose to arm school staff and raise the minimum age to purchase certain firearms to 21 in a plan the administration will release on Sunday, a White House spokesman said.
The proposal on age limits for gun purchases will put the president on a collision course with the National Rifle Association, which endorsed him and donated to his White House campaign.
Sunday’s announcement came two days after the NRA filed a lawsuit against a measure signed into law by Florida’s governor, Rick Scott, that included raising the age limit on buying a gun from 18 to 21.
The deputy White House press secretary, Raj Shah, told ABC’s This Week Trump was also likely to back a bipartisan Senate bill that Republican John Cornyn and Democrat Chris Murphy introduced to improve federal compliance with criminal background checks.
“There’s going to be a series of proposals,” Shah said. “Some will be legislative, some will be administrative and some will be recommendations for states as well as a taskforce to study this issue in more depth and make more additional policy recommendations. So it’s going to be consistent with what the president has talked about.”
During his White House run, Trump touted his support for gun rights. Since the shooting last month in which 17 people were killed at a high school in Parkland, Florida, he has offered conflicting statements on gun policies, at times calling for new restrictions and at other times rowing back.
Student survivors of the Florida shooting have mobilized to call for stricter laws. A former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school is accused of using an assault-style rifle to carry out the massacre.
Shah did not say if Trump’s proposal to raise the minimum age for buying certain guns would involved supporting federal legislation or encouraging states to act. Many Republican lawmakers say such moves should be left to states.
Shah also said there would be a provision that would involve having “trained individuals” in schools, including staff.
On Friday, Scott said the Florida bill was “an example to the entire country that government can, and has, moved fast” on gun control.
An NRA spokesman, Chris Cox, responded that the bill punished law-abiding gun owners for the criminal acts of a “deranged individual”.
Chris Grady, a senior at Stoneman Douglas and an organizer of a rally against gun violence planned for 24 March in Washington, called March for our Lives, said the Florida bill was “nowhere near the long-term solution” and “a baby step, but a huge step at the same time”.
On Saturday, the Department of Justice formally submitted a regulation to ban “bump stocks”, a modification to high-capacity rifles that lets them fire like an automatic weapon, that would not need congressional approval.
The gunman Stephen Paddock used a bump stock in an October 2017 shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and more than 850 injured.
