President Trump has proposed that the solution to preventing school shootings is arming teachers. Former New York Police Commissioner Bill Bratton ... disagrees.
"Proposals to arm American teachers are the height of lunacy," Bratton wrote Thursday in a Twitter thread. He sarcastically added that schools should perhaps "arm school bus drivers and school crossing guards" and said that such proposals are merely "political Band-Aids." The president and the NRA announced their support for armed teachers in the wake of a mass shooting last week at a high school in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.
"The answer to gun violence isn't more guns," Bratton declared. Citing New York City's decline in gun violence over the last 25 years, the former police commissioner said "fewer guns has resulted in dramatically less gun-related violence of all types." Bratton also seemed to imply his support for an assault weapons ban, as he noted that a previous ban on assault weapons "lowered crime involving that weapon."
Although Bratton was a controversial police commissioner because of his support of a "broken windows" policy that cracked down on minor crimes, he has long been a proponent of gun control and has previously claimed the National Rifle Association has a "stranglehold" on Congress.