While Jenelle Evans doubles down on guns in the wake of the latest mass shooting, Briana DeJesus is stepping up and sharing some much more sensible views.
In particular, she’s trashing the idea of arming teachers, and targeting the Florida legislature’s move to do so in particular.
In a world where the President is a reality star, it’s not so surprising to hear a Teen Mom 2 star making some salient points about public policy.
On February 14th, a tragic and terrible shooting at a Florida high school left 17 dead.
The survivors have become a rallying point for common sense gun control legislation. Noting a failure of government leadership, a number of major businesses — starting with Dick’s Sporting Goods — have announced that they’re enacting their own measures.
In the mean time, Trump has suggested arming teachers with guns, an idea that’s been widely lampooned online.
And the Florida legislature, to the surprise of no one familiar with the exploits of Florida Man and Florida Woman, decided to pour $ 67 million into a plan to arm teachers throughout the state.
Briana DeJesus took to Twitter to speak out:
“Stupidest thing ever to give teachers guns … what is the point of safety patrols on campuses then??”
She’s referring to school resource officers — police who spend time working security on campuses as a measure that people hope will keep students safer.
Briana DeJesus gets very real about the role that racism plays in schools and in countless shootings.
“I have a child of color and knowing 10 teachers in her school will carry a gun terrifies me.”
With guns everyone, it just takes one racist person on one bad day to end a child’s life.
“As a parent I know I won’t be able to protect my kids every second go the day. And I would want their teachers to love and protect like I would.”
But Briana lives in real life, not in fantasy land where everyone’s a trained marksman. (Though we should note that many combat veterans have spoken out about how dangerous arming teachers could be)
“But giving teachers guns just isn’t right and spending 67 [million dollars] is crazy.”
The amount that the legislature was willing to conjure up out of nowhere is a sticking point for many people.
“They won’t ever spend 67 million on education but for guns … it’s okay?”
Someone challenged her, suggesting that arming teachers — who are not trained to be armed guards and are not paid to be armed guards — would be a great way to protect students.
“I’m all for protecting kids but there’s no reason to give TEACHERS guns.”
She’s already addressed the expense and the fact that not all teachers would be safe with a gun.
But she clearly doesn’t want to argue.
“But whatever. Let’s see how this plays out. I hope for the best!”
Trump, of course, announced his “policy proposal” just as he announces his other bad ideas — with his little orange thumbs.
“What I said was to look at the possibility of giving concealed guns to gun adept teachers with military or special training experience — only the best.”
His version of “best” is famously laughable — just look at the turnaround in the White House.
“20% of teachers, a lot, would now be able to.”
Trump then makes some weird sports analogies that perhaps golf players will understand. A real man of the people.
“I want highly trained people that have a natural talent, like hitting a baseball, or hitting a golf ball, or putting. How come some people always make the four-footer and some people under pressure can’t even take their club back, right? They can’t even take their club back.”
He seemed to lose himself on a sports tangent.
Briana did not mention that even highly trained marksmen are considered to be doing “very well” if they have 40% weapon accuracy in live fire simulations.
So even if teachers are having a shootout with some gunman, where are the other 60% of the bullets going?
Some of them are going into students.
Of course, Trump said that he wanted to take away guns, and then pivoted because he doesn’t actually know what he’s saying at any given time.
He now plans to meet with video game executives, because surely those violent video games are to blame, even though Canada and the UK and Australia all play the exact same games without the shootings.
Briana didn’t get into all of that. That’s okay — she’s a reality star, not a politician.
But even she knows that children don’t need to be around guns. Which is more than we can say for certain people.
