“I’d rather have somebody that loves their students and wants to protect their students than somebody standing outside that doesn’t know anybody, and doesn’t know the students, and frankly, for whatever reason, decided not to go in even though he heard lots of shots being fired inside,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. Peterson. He said the officer “was not a credit to law enforcement.”
Speaking of the gunman in Parkland, Mr. Trump added that if his idea had been in place, “a teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he knew what happened.”
It was the third time in three days that Mr. Trump, who has vowed to take swift action after the latest school shooting, has championed the idea of transforming schools into fortified zones where educators would secretly be carrying weapons to guard against attacks.
Mr. Trump is under pressure to embrace stiffer gun restrictions, including a ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity ammunition, despite vehement N.R.A. opposition. The president has instead seized on the idea of loosening gun laws to protect schools.
“Why do we protect our airports and our banks, our government buildings, but not our schools?” Mr. Trump said. “It’s time to make our schools a much harder target for attackers.”
He said declaring schools gun-free zones “puts our students in far more danger.”
Mr. Trump, who was endorsed by the N.R.A. during his campaign and has been an ardent ally, suggested that he was pressuring the gun lobby to accept measures it had deemed objectionable. But the two proposals he mentioned on Friday — improving background checks for gun buyers and ensuring that mentally ill people cannot have access to firearms — are both supported by the group.
Later Friday, Mr. Trump expressed confidence that lawmakers would join forces with him to address the tragedy, particularly on the issue of background checks.
“We’re going to do a lot, but we are going to be very strong on background checks,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference at the White House with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia. “I’ve spoken with many of our people in Congress — our senators, our congressmen and women — and there’s a movement on to get something done.”
But Democrats were stepping up their calls for more restrictive gun laws, far beyond what Mr. Trump suggested.
“It’s time for Republicans in Congress to show just a shred of the courage of American students,” Representative Ted Deutch, the Democrat who represents Parkland, said in the party’s weekly radio address. “It’s time for Speaker Ryan to let the House vote to require background checks on every sale and transfer, to keep guns out of the hands of suspected terrorists, to outlaw bump stocks that enable automatic rates of fire, to require that no one under the age of 21 can buy a gun, and to once again ban assault weapons from our streets.”
Mr. Trump’s comments on arming teachers were part of a highly partisan speech to the conservative gathering — an annual meeting that draws the hard-right activists who form the backbone of his political coalition — in which the president proclaimed that his first 12 months in office “the most successful first year in the history of the presidency.” He referred to Democrats as “crazed,” and said his opponents had “committed a lot of atrocities.” His remarks were met with rapturous applause.
On a day when his former top campaign aide, Rick Gates, pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s inquiry into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, Mr. Trump smiled broadly as the crowd chanted “Lock her up!” in a campaign refrain that referred to Hillary Clinton, his Democratic rival. Appearing at ease among some of his most fervent supporters, Mr. Trump returned to his well-worn list of campaign themes — “Don’t worry, you’re getting the wall,” he told the crowd — and even poked fun at his trademark bright-blond pompadour after catching a glimpse of his image on a giant screen in the convention hall.
“Oh, I try like hell to hide that bald spot, folks, I work hard at it,” he said. “It doesn’t look bad. Hey, we are hanging in, we are hanging in, we are hanging in there — right?”
But most of his speech had a harder edge. Mr. Trump outlined his efforts to step up immigration enforcement and crack down on so-called sanctuary cities, those that decline to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to track and remove undocumented immigrants. And he returned to a favorite campaign-trail routine of reciting the lyrics to a song called “The Snake,” about a woman who takes in an ailing snake that recovers and repays her hospitality with a lethal bite — suggesting an analogy between immigrants and a poisonous reptile.
“Think of it in terms of immigration,” Mr. Trump said, before reciting the verses for the cheering audience. When he finished, he said, “And that’s what we’re doing with our country, we’re letting them in.”
Mr. Trump ended the address with a call to action for Republicans, and warned that they must not be complacent about getting out to vote in 2018 and defeating Democrats.
“They want to give your money away, they want to end your tax cuts, they want to do things you wouldn’t believe — including taking your Second Amendment rights away,” Mr. Trump said. “They will do that, so we have to get out there, and we have to fight in ‘18 like never before.”
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