How does it help to bring even more guns into American schools?

President Donald Trump’s calls for arming highly trained teachers in order to fortify schools against shooting massacres is the very proposal advanced by the gun lobby. After the deadliest school shooting in US history – the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut rampage – the National Rifle Association advocated for teachers to be armed.

That stands to reason. The gun lobby wants more guns everywhere. It wants guns to be the answer to the gun problem.

It wants every American to be a gun-owner and to be able to carry a concealed firearm everywhere.

Hence, Mr Trump’s tweet, as follows:

“Highly trained teachers would also serve as a deterrent to the cowards that do this. Far more assets at much less cost than guards. A ‘gun free’ school is a magnet for bad people.”

Consider the possibilities if this crazy idea came to pass.

• Teachers who are “mentally ill”, in Mr Trump’s favourite words, might be the ones who now commit mass shootings
• Ditto, sacked “mentally ill” teachers with grudges
• A whole new problem will have been created, and even more guns will be in schools

And then there is the chance of the same thing as happened in the Florida school shooting. That armed teachers, will like the armed school resource officer Scot Peterson, fail to intervene in an active shooter incident. Mr Peterson never went in to the building where the shooter was busy killing people. Did he lose his nerve? And if a highly trained armed officer faltered, what chance that most teachers will not?