Thurgood marshall. They are elite athletes, junior olympics. One of my sons was a Youth Council member for district of columbia and ward 5. One day this is after school. I agree we need to protect our kids in schools, but we need to protect them more in safe passageways home as well. Extracurricular activities and parks and recreations. My sons went to College Bound after school to announce he was declaring for his college to run track and further his education, become mayor of district of columbia or Something Like that. On his route home, he got a text from my other son who wasnt going to make he found out e would be press and he decided not to go. They are texting each other, watch out. There is someone in our passageway coming home. In a split second, zaire was walking home, maybe from this distance to where the curtains are. He was that close to home when a thug came out to try to rob his brother. He tried to rob them both. He came back. He didnt get those students. He caught my son, got in an altercation over a cell phone, shot my son in the head and know he is not here with us. That day, i couldve lost two sons. The tragedy my family has to live with after losing zaire. I have another son that attend thurgood marshall. We have been taking him to all types of Family Counseling and therapy and the school has been effective. The community has been effective. Local politicians there. What we want to do is stand up for our students in the community. Give us some solutions as to what we can do. Myself along with helping hands in d. C. Came together and got with our attorney. We said okay, we are going to do some research and find out what legislation can be found they can better serve to protect our students in their safety zones, their school zones. Its been a fight because everybody will show up for photo ops, all the politicians show up to say we are going to get it done. We are going to protect our kids. But a couple weeks later, School Shooting, just like we are all hearing about, all experiencing, at a senior high school. A kid got shot at school. In our school, on their safe passageway home, parks and recreation, extracurricular. Our students have to be protected. Our students have to be protected. One local legislator asked me, how do you find student . How would a criminal define student . You define them after you commit a crime against them. The students are crying. They are calling for a national standout day, april 20. In celebration of columbine because the same incidents keep happening, not just in schools, in our communities as well. To upstanding citizens, those were doing the right thing. We as parents are trying to fight to pass legislation just like you, locally. Nationally, this campaign has grown and its affecting all of us, all our kids. Gun violence. Gun violence. Thank you. Thats my story, and were going to keep fighting and keep trying to pass legislation and theyre going to keep fighting for our students. Thurgood marshall here in the district of columbia and across america as well. President trump thank you very much. Its incredible. We are sad. Thank you very much. Does anybody have an idea for a solution for the School Shootings we have gone through over the years . We have seen too much of it and we are going to it. There are a lot of different ideas. I can name ten of them right now. Does anybody have an idea as to how to stop it . What is your recommendation to stop it . Yes. I dont know if im going to Say Something you havent already heard. I can tell you that in addition to all of the sorrow we are feeling in our community right now, theres also a lot of anger. Anger that the police can visit a person dozens of times and not take action. Anger that the fbi could get at least two credible tips and not take action. One possible solution which we discussed with secretary devos, if the tragedy strikes, can we wait for the First Responders to get to the campus four or five or six or 7 minutes later. One possible solution which may not be very popular would be to have people in the School Teachers, administrators who have volunteered to have a firearm safely locked in the classroom for a given training the year. There are plenty of teachers who already licensed to carry firearms. Have them raise their hands to volunteer for the training, and when Something Like this starts, the First Responders are already on campus. If it is not the teachers, you could have people that work on the campus. A custodian could be an undercover policeman. Somebody who works in the library or the 1 could be an undercover policeman. He served lunch every day but he also has a firearm at the ready. A guidance counselor. If you cant stop it from happening and with hundreds of millions of guns out there, i dont know if it will ever be fully stopped. But the challenge becomes, once it starts, ten ended as quickly as possible. Unfortunately you cant wait five or six or 7 minutes. What my daughter said earlier, but there are 32 states that have laws that require the schools to prepare for this, and yet more than half and Broward County is one of them and our school was prepared. Saint god it was only 17 lives but would more than half the counties wont spend the money out of their budget for the training, even though the losses they should, it will be that many more the next time. Between having the schools train for lockdowns and possibly having armed personnel staff that are willing to do it, the outcome anonymously. I dont want the kids know who have the firearms. I dont want the shooters to know who have the firearms. I dont want people Walking Around with firearms on their side. But when that alert goes off and they put the kids in the closets and put the kids under the desk, then i want the teacher to open that safe, pull out the firearm come and be ready to do what needs to be done while youre waiting for the helicopters and s. W. A. T. Teams. I think you need more deputies. You have a campus, 3200. One deputy . One. If that deputy leaves for a training, we need another deputy there. The other thing is communicatio communication. Schools have to communicate with the police. Police have to communicate with child services. Child services maybe has to communicate with fbi. For someone to buy a gun at 18, to even do a background in 15 minutes. You should be able to communicate with all of those other people that something is wrong and this child doesnt belong buying a gun like this. Mr. President , mr. Vice president , secretary. Thank you for having us. I think what youre hearing is there and is no lack of solutions. There is a lack of leadership. I am confident you will bring out the leadership we need to finally take the action that needs to be taken. There is not one solution. There is many solutions, and youre hearing some of those today, to resolve it, address it. Our schools are soft targets. We need to harden the targets by making them, to increase our deterrence capabilities. A potential murderer knows thats not going to happen. Theres going to be people there ready to respond, that the minute something happens, our technology will pick up an incident has occurred and it will be responded to immediately. Teachers and children know what to do. They are communicated with effectively. We need to identify where this Mental Health issue is among the student population. The kids at the school knew this person. They knew he was an issue. The fbi knew. I think we need to close some of these loopholes in the background check system where we are not integrating effectively the Mental Health knowledge that exists at the state level, at the local level, into the federal background check system. Fixing the system, thats an easy one. Immediate steps we can take. Longerterm solutions. I think we need to get started right away. I thank you for your help on this. President trump background checks are going to be very strong. We need that. After we do that, we see there is trouble, we have to nab them. Years ago we had mental hospitals, mental institutions. We had a lot of them. A lot of them have closed. Some people thought it was a stigma. Some people thought it was legislators thought it was too expensive. Today if you catch somebody, they dont know what to do. He hasnt committed the crime but he may very well. There is no mental institution. There is no place to bring them. We have that a lot. Even if they caught this person. I am being nice when i use the word person. They probably wouldnt have known what to do. They are not going to put him in jail. There is no middle ground of having that institution where you have trained people they could handle it. And do something about it. Find out how sick he really is because he is a release that guy. He should have been nabbed a number of times. Your concept about concealed carry, it only works where you have people very adept at using firearms, of which you have man many. It would be teachers and coaches, if the coach had a firearm in his locker when he ran at this guy. That coach was very brave. Saved a lot of lives are suspect. If he had a firearm, he wouldnt of had to run. He would have shot and that wouldve been the end of it. This would only be obviously for people who are very adept at handling a gun. Its called concealed carry where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them. They would go for special training and they would be there, and you would no longer have a gun free zone. Gun free zone to a maniac, because they are all cowards, a gun free zone is lets go in and lets attack. Bullets arent coming back. If you do this, and a lot of people are talking about it, its certainly a point we will discuss. Concealed carry for teachers and for people of talent, of that type of talent. Lets say you had 20 of your teaching force. Thats pretty much the number. You said it. An attack has lasted on average about 3 minutes. It takes five to 8 minutes for responders, for the police to come in. The attack is over. If you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well and they tag very quickly. The good thing about a suggestion like that we are going to be looking at a very strongly. I think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it. A lot of people will like it. You cant have 100 Security Guards in stoneman douglas. Thats a big school, Massive School with a lot of acreage to cover, a lot of floor area. So that would be certainly a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people. He would have a lot of people that would be armed. They would be ready. They are professionals. They may be marines that left the marines, left the army, left the air force, and they are very adept at doing that. He would have a lot of them and they would be spread evenly throughout the school. So the other thing i really believe that if these cowards knew that that was that the school was well guarded from the standpoint of having pretty much professionals with great training, i think they wouldnt go into the school to start off with. I think it could very well solve your problem. So we will be doing the background checks. Well be doing a lot of Different Things that will be certainly looking at ideas like that. You know, a lot of people dont understand that airline pilots, a lot of them carry guns. And i have to say that things have changed a lot. People arent attacking the way they would routinely attack. Maybe you have the same situation in schools. Does anybody like that idea here . Does anybody like it . Right, yes . Meadow. Your beautiful meadow. Do people feel strongly against it, anybody, anybody . Strongly against it. We can understand both sides. Certainly its controversial. But we will study it along with many other ideas. Anybody else, something to say . Go ahead. Ive been in thousands of schools across america. In israel, they have one entry points. Its very well guarded. Im not asking for that. Im not saying we should turn our schools into prisons but ive been in so many schools or im speaking. I was outside to call my wife or get a breath of fresh air. It is so easy to get back in the school. I can tap on a window, they will open the door. Or i can catch someone coming out a side door and get in. One of the things i have thought a lot about, sing this around the country, we have really soft entry points. President trump thats true. We can do something about that. Yes, sir, go ahead. Good afternoon. I am Brandon Thompson. My heart goes out to everyone who is experiencing this tragedy right now. I am currently dean of students at friendship tech prep in the e hurt the in d. C. At our school, we have checkpoints. When a student walks in the door, we have metal detectors. Often times i see that in urban education. We have an xray machine that students put their bags through and right after this incident happened, apparent who didnt so much agree with it at first sent me an email saying thank you because now i see exactly whats happening. We oftentimes use that tsa model. When a student comes in, we have somebody at the door to greet them to do a check in to see how they feel. We have certain point people. I know this person is not feeling so well so they wont get past. 1. They go through the metal detector. Their bag goes through the machine. At the end the day, just talking to my students today, they say i feel safe. You come outside. You talk about mental hospitals. Our schools across the street from a shut down mental hospita hospital. Once you get inside the building, we have a family feel. We have checkin points. We have it where every visitor who comes to the building has to go through checkpoints to ensure our students get home safe, to ensure our Staff Members get home safe. These are just minor solutions. I will say im against having a teacher with a gun in a building. Teachers are emotional. People are emotional. I think thats a huge factor. Having students, you may have to go to the Staff Members going through these checkpoints to ensure their mental is on point and that we are talking about they dont have any physical metal on them. In our building, our students dont even carry cell phones because we consider its a threat. They turn in their cell phones. Its taking way from their learning. We are ensuring our kids are in the moment, to live the moment and enjoy school. They get their joy factor, their family feel, they can connect with one another and communicate and not worry about looking over their shoulder when they walk in and out of the building. They know every person who comes in the building has been through a metal check. My heart goes out to everyone whos been through this tragedy. President trump very well said. Thank you for being open to hearing all forms of solutions. I truly appreciate that. One point on the Mental Health issue, and i think its important to note that someone with a Mental Illness is highly unlikely to ever commit an act of violence. Its a very, very small percentage. What we are really dealing with is a lack of Mental Wellness around anger and fear. Thats not something you can diagnose and put in Mental Health hospitals. This is more about funding for Mental Health services to help these individuals that are at risk. Especially when we think about suicide. Teen suicide, suicide is the number two killer of our children as i understand right now. A lot of these suicides are performed with firearms which makes them unfavorable. The idea of identifying who is going into crisis. I appreciate the point on Arming Teachers. Its not personally something that i support. Rather than armed them with a firearm, i would rather arm them with the knowledge of how to prevent these acts from happening in the first place. How do you identify the kids in your class or most at risk. Most importantly, how do we have a Safety Assessment program so that schools know how to deal with these threats. Have established protocols to deal with them and get underneath the surface of whats going on in that childs life. Find out why they are on this pathway of behavior and intervene. Its about prevention. There are some fabulous solutions being talked about today which still go to imminent danger. Lets talk about prevention. There is so much we can do to help people before it reaches that point. I urge you please stay focused on that as well. Its the gun. Its the person behind the gun. And its about helping people before they ever reach that point. Thank you. I fully respect all of our amendments, including the second. But in maryland, they have proven that the Second Amendment does not protect these types of weapons. They have banned over 45 different kinds of assault weapons, including dar. Including the ar. They have limited magazine sizes. They have proven its not like we have to lose our Second Amendment. The Second Amendment i believe was for defense. And i fully respect that. Like i said. These are not weapons of defense. These are weapons of war. And i still cant fathom that i myself am able to purchase one. I couldnt agree im not here to debate. I lost my sister. Like mr. President said, if you can find 20 of maybe retired Law Enforcement officers or teachers you could go through for training to carry a firearm, it could have been a very different situation. Like you said, Law Enforcement, it takes them 7 minutes, 8 minutes to get there. If a teacher or Security Guard has a concealed license and a firearm on their ways, they are able to easily stop the situation. Or the bad guy, i will put it that way, they would not even go near the school knowing someone can fight back against them. Also i believe that its insanity they would even open the gates up 20 minutes before school ends. They are supposed to protect us and the children. So in the future, we need more security. We need more firearms on campus. We need better background checks. And we need to study more on Mental Health. I want to thank ever