D.L. Hughley and T.I. have made their stance on gun violence known. ( Desiree Navarro/WireImage/Gage Skidmore/Roy Rochlin/FilmMagic)
After Donald Trump remarked Wednesday that he was looking into arming teachers as a way to prohibit school mass shootings, several celebrities have sounded off.
Trump made the comments during a Feb. 21 sitdown with survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting at the White House. At the Parkland, Fla. school last week, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz used an AR-15 to open fire and fatally shoot 17 teachers and students.
“This would obviously only be for people very adept at handling a gun,” Trump said according to Fortune. “It’s called concealed carry, where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them, they’d go for special training, and they would be there and you would no longer have a gun-free zone.”
In response to his remarks, several celebrities — including John Legend, W. Kamau Bell and D.L. Hughley, have spoken out.
Both Legend and Hughley (via his team) blasted the idea of arming teachers on Twitter Wednesday.
“#Trump wants to arm teachers with guns, but not arm them with the resources they need to teach! #TeamDl” the comic’s Twitter handle posted.
“We don’t pay our teachers enough to TEACH,” tweeted Legend. “Now these fools want them to double as armed security. Meanwhile, our kids are the active shooter drill generation.”
The singer also advocated for a weapons ban, tweeting in part, “It’s only a small portion of the solution to our gun violence problem. But it’s an important step toward ending the American epidemic of mass shooting.”
The fact this is up for discussion is totally absurd. But this is a good thread to hopefully obliterate the COMPLETELY LUDICROUS idea that arming teachers is the solution to school shootings. https://t.co/yf4jHfpCOR
— John Legend (@johnlegend) February 21, 2018
Stand-up comedian W. Kamau Bell summed up his thoughts on arming teachers this way.
“This is like being on a road trip, zooming down the highway at 65 miles per hour, looking over at the driver’s seat, and seeing no one is in it,” he tweeted.
However, Kellyann Conway had nothing but praise for Trump’s “listening session” and blasted media focus on allowing 20 percent of teachers to be armed.
“The small discussion yesterday about the possibility of allowing some educators and administrators to be armed at some schools, to focus on that alone today is disingenuously covering the fuller discussion yesterday,” Conway says on “Fox & Friends” Thursday, Feb. 22. “And frankly, it’s disrespectful to the people who are in that room raising any number of different issues.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAh25jTW3QM
