Embassy in the u. S. We havent heard back. Ill let you know if we do. Watch this space. That does it for us tonight. Now its time for the last word with lawrence odonnell. Good evening. Good evening. I know you know the president s big idea in his meeting today with some of the survivors and some of the families of victims of School Shootings was that teachers should have guns, we need more guns in the school, teachers should have them. Ill be joined by a teacher at Stoneman Douglas high school and a teacher from columbine, theyll talk to us about the experience with the assault weapons in their schools and what they might be able to do with f they had gones. Well done. Thanks, lawrence. Yesterday when pressed if the president had any ideas of his own to make schools safer, the press secretary had no answer. And when asked if they favor newt begin grijs idea to have teachers have guns, the press secretary had no idea. She said she never discussed that with the president. Now we know the answer to that question. Its called concealed carry. It works where you have people adept at using firearms, which you have 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 i suspect. But if he had a firearm he wouldnt have had to run, that would have been the end of it. That would have been the end of it. Thats Donald Trumps imagining of what might have been if one of the coaches at marjory Stoneman Douglas had a gun last week, a handgun, when the bullets started flying. If he had a firearm, he wouldnt have to run, he would have shot. And that would have been the end of it. We dont know which coach donald trump was talking about, because he does not know the names of the three School Personnel and the 14 students who were murdered last week. Those names were not on the short list of talking points that the president held in his hand during that meeting. The president might be talking about aaron feis, who was an assistant football coach, he ran toward the sound of the gun fire, his wife and daughter wilburry him tomorrow. He was 37 years old. Or the president might have been talking about christopher hick son, the L Athletic Department head and wrestling coach, he leaves behind his wife and four children, he was 49 years old. Or the president could have been talking about 35yearold scott beigel a teacher and track coach. He stayed in his classroom protecting his students, and thats where he was skilled. And several of his students said that scott beigel personally saved their lives. If he only had a gun. Thats what the president thinks. If one of those coaches had a gun, the president believes he would have fired that gun and that would have been the end of it. Thats the way this fantasy war game plays out for everyone who thinks its a good idea to give teachers an extra job, the extra job nobody suggests they get paid for, the job of Police Officer. The people who suggest that, all ignore there was a Police Officer at the school and its a very Big High School with multiple buildings, over 3000 students and a Police Officer assigned to the school every day. And that Police Officer did his best, it didnt turn out to be as easy as donald trump imagined. The Police Officers hearing has to be perfect. It has to tell him where the shooting is coming from, he cant be faked out by echos. He has to go right to the shots where the shots are coming from and stand there and aim his hand begun at the shooter with the assault weapon. And then just kill the shooter. And Donald Trumps world, to do that, the teacher, the Police Officer with the gun, has to be very, very lucky. The shooter would have to allow him to do it. The shooter would have to decide not to fire his assault weapon at the teacher with the gun or the teacher would have to be lucky enough to come up behind the shooter with the assault weapon and the teacher would have to be lucky enough that theres absolutely no one else in their space that the shooter and the teacher are alone in a hallway or classroom. So when the teacher fires his hand begun, the only possible person hit is the shooter. There cant be dozens of students huddled on the floor behind the shooter, or dozens of students or teachers running away from the shooter because all of them could be hit by the teachers bullets. Simple minds imagine the ideal scenario for their imagined hero to take down a shooter with an assault weapon and high capacity magazines moving through hallways in a school. Of course, donald trump is naive enough to think that any teacher could handle this job of being the secret campus cop who always has the concealed handgun ready to go against the assault weapon. This would be for people adept at handling a gun, and it would be its called concealed carry. Where a teacher would have had a concealed gun on them, theyd go for special training. So teacher training would not be enough for these teachers. They would have to go for special Firearms Training. Donald trump and republicans would be unwilling to pay pr that training. Donald trumps own budget cuts money for security. Republicans cut funding by a trillion and a half dollars with their tax cuts. They didnt leave any money for training teachers to use firearms in shootouts with mass murderers who have assault weapons. Thats a complex form of Firearms Training. Thats not going to a firearms range and aiming at the classic hanging target. That is more specializeded than the Firearms Training that most Police Officers in america actually get. Lets just assume that the teacher with a gun gets exactly the same amount of training with the Police Officer with the gun, and lets remember, thats taking time away from the rest of that teachers duties as a teacher to do that Firearms Training. But lets just assume that happens, we train teachers with firearms just as much as we train Police Officers. Heres something donald trump doesnt know, most bullets fired by trained Police Officers miss their targets most of the time. And they miss their targets by wide margins, for many reasons but mostly because the target isnt cooperating with being shot. The target isnt stationary, the target is moving. And theres no form of training and experience than going up against the mass murderers, theres no form of training that duplicates the emotional, psychological experience that a teacher would go through when going against an assault weapon that has already killed his students and is now aimed at the teacher, who is armed with a hand begun. Handgun. Teachers are not going to be more accurate in their used of handguns than trained Police Officers are. Teachers would miss the target probably more often than Police Officers do. Teachers would miss their target most of the time, just like Police Officers. And what would teachers hit . Donald trump would put teachers in the position of firing a handgun under unimaginable pressure and possibly killing one on or more of their own students in the process by mistake. And then would come the aftermath that the Police Departments are familiar with, wrongful death lawsuits, state and local governments payout hundreds of millions of dollars a year as compensation for bad shootings by trained Police Officers. Hundreds of millions of dollars. The federal government doesnt cover one penny of that. Donald trumps government is not going to cover one penny of any settlement involving a teacher mistakenly, tragically, shooting a student, wounding a student or killing a student or several students. Teachers will not be able to buy insurance policies that protect them from those risks, no Insurance Company would take that business. Donald trump doesnt know who teachers are, he doesnt know what they actually do. Hes never been a teacher, not related to a teacher. Its not the type of work his kids would ever be drawn to. By all reports he never paid any attention at all to his own kids education. Donald trump does not know that 76 of american schoolteachers are female. 76 . Some schools have 100 female teaching staff. Donald trump imagines that every school has big strong coaches and theyre all eager to conceal a hand begun so they can take on the next School Shooter with an ar15. Heres how donald trump thinks teachers should go to school with a handgun. Lets say you have 20 of your teaching force, thats the number. 20 , thats 700,000 teachers in america who need to go to School Tomorrow with a concealed handgun because according to donald trump all they have to do is shoot the guy, because its always a guy with the assault weapon, and that would be the end of it. Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school has about 140 teachers, coachers, administrators, so that means 28 of them would have to show up to work every day carrying their concealed handguns. 28 of them would have to be ready to run toward the sound of the assault weapon and, of course, each one of those 28 teachers with their handguns would have to always know the exact movements of the other 27 teachers with their handguns so they dont fire in such a way that they could shoot each other. They would have to know where each of those 28 handguns are every second so that students dont get caught in the cross fire of those 28 handguns that donald trump imagines could have been fired at that shooter last week. Usually when Police Officers respond to shooting incidents like that, they dont immediately run into the building and run toward the sound of the assault weapon. They coordinate, they have radio communication, they try not to make a move without knowing what every other armed Police Officer is doing, without know r where every other Police Officer is, theyre covered in body armor and even covered in body armor, they dont immediately confront the shooter. Youre not going to want to be the teacher running around the school with a handgun when the s. W. A. T. Team enters that school looking for the mass murderer. Theres a real risk that the teachers with the handgun would be shot by the s. W. A. T. Team who dont know that those teachers are the good guys. The president obviously doesnt know what hes talking about. He didnt meet with some survivors and parents and victims of School Shootings today to find a solution to the mass murder epidemic. He went in with written talking points written for him and he echoed those points. The idea of teachers carrying guns is another smoke screen by another politician who wants to make sure that mass murderers can easily obtain assault weapons and super sized magazines and unlimited amounts of ammunition. Donald trump wants to use the idea of teachers with guns as a solution, a real solution to the problem of School Shooters so that there would be no need to ban assault weapons now that teachers have guns. The president didnt say one word about assault weapons today, and that is the issue for most of the marjory Stoneman Douglas students who have been stepping up to microphones, including sam zeif, who was at the meeting with the president today. I dont understand why i can still go in a store and buy a weapon of war. An ar. I was reading today that a person 20 years old walked into a store and bought an ar15 in 5 minutes with an expired id. How is it that easy to buy this type of weapon . How do we not stop this after columbine, after sandy hook. Im sitting with a mother who lost her son. Its still happening. In australia there was a shooting at a school in 1999. You know after that, they took a lot of ideas, put legislation together, and they stopped it. Can anyone here guess how many shootings there have been in the schools since then in australia . Zero. We need to do something. Thats why were here. Fox news doesnt cover what happened in australia, so thats probably the very first time that donald trump heard that. Even some people who own ar15s have changed their minds this week about those weapons. There are youtube videos of owners of ar15s destroying them, cutting them in half and saying proudly now we have one less a rod rosensteir15. Thats what the massacre did to them to change their mind. Not one republican has changed their position on assault weapons. Not one position who takes money from the nra, like florida senator marco rubio changed their opinion on assault weapon. Donald trump and mike pence sitting in that room with victims have not changed their mind on assault weapons. And the only thing donald trump had was what to do when that assault weapon shows up at your school as it will if donald trump and the republicans get continue to get their way that assault weapons are so easy to get that most of our mass murderers walk into a store, by them legally, and fill up the magazines and start ripping apart the bodies and faces of our children in schools. Donald trumps idea is to do nothing. To keep the the assault weapon out of the school, to keep the assault weapon out of the hands of a mass murderer who can pass a background check, his solution is to put a much weaker and inaccurate handgun into the hands of the teacher who he thinks can stand there and shoot the mass murderer and that will be the end of it. Donald trump and every other politician who take money from the nra is going to make sure that the mass murderers who enter our schools will still be the best equipped mass murderers in the world. They will still be able to get assault weapons, super sized magazines and unlimited amounts of ammunitions. Weapons of war will continue to come into our schools because donald trump and republican politicians refuse to restore the assault weapons ban that for 10 years in this country actually did reduce Mass Shootings in america. Two teachers who have endured these attacks will join us next. One from marjory Stoneman Douglas high, and one from columbine high school. Liberty mutual stood with me when this guy got a flat tire in the middle of the night. Hold on dad. Liberty did what . Yeah, Liberty Mutual 24hour roadside assistance helped him to fix his flat so he could get home safely. My dad says our insurance doesnt have that. Dont worry i know what a lug wrench is, dad. Is this a lug wrench . Maybe . You can leave worry behind when liberty stands with you™. Liberty stands with you™. Liberty mutual insurance. 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 the ar. The Second Amendment, i believe, was for defense and i fully respect that, like i said. But these these are not weapons of defense. These are weapons of war. That was sam zeif student at marjory Stoneman Douglas high school today. Joining us now is a Science Teacher and marjory Stoneman Douglas and paula reed, a teacher at columbine high school, shes been a teacher there since 1996. Shawn simpson, i want to start with you. Feel free, i mean this to both of you, to share any thoughts you have about this, i dont mean to control what you have to say about this, but we are interested in your reaction to the president s idea of Arming Teachers, that thats the solution, thats how to deal with assault weapons coming into the schools, senator rubio, Florida Republican senator, has opposed that. It has not been greeted with any real support since the president said it so it doesnt sound like its going anywhere. But shawn simpson, your reaction to that, especially since he cited the coach, not sure which coach since three were killed at your school, the president believes if one of them had a gun, it would have ended right there. Larry, i dont know if thats even possible, to be true. I know aaron and christopher and mr. Biegel were heroes in what they did. Im not sure having a firearm would have changed that for those three. I have colleagues that do believe that having the option of being armed should be, you know, an option. That being said, you were right when i heard you say in your opening monologue, i guess it would be, that officer peterson was there, he got there quickly, and facing an assault weapon with his bullet proof vest and his gun he didnt really stand a chance. Ive seen people on the internet go after him saying he should have done more. I dont know what those people are thinking, going up against a semiautomatic rifle and a young man that i believe let off about 150 rounds, im not sure what he could have done more than he did. We had a similar situation. Go ahead. Could somebody else we also had an armed sro, the same thing. So at columbine, there was an armed officer in the school when this was going on . He was on the outside of the building. He was out at lunch, but he was generally part of he was a School Resource officer, he was there every day. He exchanged fire with eric outside the school. And mr. Simpson, the students who have been stepping up to the microphone from your school are in favor of banning assault weapons to going back at a minimum the assault weapons ban that we had had for ten years that did reduce this kind of shooting, but the Florida Legislature certainly wasnt li