president trump: i'm very honored to have you here. we're going to do something about this situation that is coming on. i want to listen and then thank you.ten -- [inaudible] president trump: thank you very much. appreciate it. i would like you to say a few words and i would like to ntroduce you to betsy devos. mike? >> first off, thank you mr. president. i want to thank the families and assure you of our deepest condolences. of this family and of the american people. as the president said last week, the american people are united with one heart that's roken. the president called this meeting asthma to talk about what's happened in our country over the last few years, and to find out from all of you together, by listening, by learning how we might ensure that this is the last time this ever happens. i, along with the president, and deeply moved by the tories of courage. and i'm candid with those who have the courage to do what it takes to be here today. i just want to encourage you to tell us your stories. america is looking on. our president, our entire administration. leaders around the country are looking on. i encourage you to be candid. to share with us not only your personal experience, but what it is that you would have us to do. just know that the president has already taken action. he will be meeting in this very room in the coming days the governors from all 50 states to make school safety the top priority of this administration, across this country. the president and i wanted to hear from you all first. i want to say thank you for coming. thank you for the courage of being willing to be here and share your hearts. from our family to your family, god bless you. thank you very much. >> students, teachers, parents, thank you for being ere. so many of you lived through something unthinkable. i admire your strength, coming to share your experience with the president, the vice president, and the world. no student, no parent, no teacher should ever have to endure what you all have. y heart is broken. it angers us. we are here to have a conversation about tragedy, how it happens, and how we work [inaudible] we are here to listen and gain an important perspective. our hope is that by talking and by listening, we can make something that was unthinkably bad into something good. your loss and your trauma must never be in vain. so, thank you again for being here. let's get started. >> thank you very much, betsy. we are going to be very strong on background checks, doing very strong background hecks. very strong in the cases of the mental health of somebody. we are going to do plenty of ther things. most of the states are having a very serious talk about what's going on with school safety. we are going to cover every aspect of it. there are many ideas that i have and that people have. we are going to pick out the strongest ideas, the most important ideas, the ideas that work and that we can get done. it won't be talk, like in the past. it's been going on too long, too many instances, we are oing to get it done. i want to thank you all for being here. i would like to hear your story and i would also like to, if you have any suggestions for the future based on this horrible experience you have gone through, i would love to have those ideas. >> all right, thank you, mr. president, for having me here. my name is julie. i was there during the shooting. i'm a survivor. i want you all to emphasize the point that i survived. i was lucky enough to come home from school. unlike my other classmates and eachers. it's very scary. knowing that a lot of people did not have this opportunity to the here, still, is mind blowing. i just, i feel like there is a lot to do and i really appreciate you posting me and what you are saying, i'm confident you will do the right thing and i appreciate you looking at the bump stocks yesterday. that is definitely a step in the right direction and i think we can all agree on that. there is definitely a lot more to go, but i'm grateful that i'm here and we can try to work out something. maybe compromise on some solutions. no child or person in this world will ever have to go through something so horrific and tragic. my thoughts and prayers go out to everyone there. thank you. >> hello, my name is jonathan blank. i go to stoneman douglas. i was in the second classroom that was shot at. in my mind, as a kid, nothing that horrible should ever have o happen to you. you can't even think about it. it doesn't even seem real, still. everything seems fake. i can't even -- i don't even know what's going on. it's just crazy, everything happening. it's just so tragic. thank you for everything. you've done a great job and i like the direction you are going in. thank you. >> my name is melissa. jonathan is my son. i was a teacher's aide at the middle school that was on lockdown. i attempted to get in touch with my son. i feel for all of these amilies. my heart is just broken for my whole community. we are coming together. i feel for all the families who have lost, and i feel for the ones who are here. because we now have a guilt, like i have. why not my child? i feel bad saying that. i'm happy that he's here with me. but i feel so that for all of you who have lost so many. nd i'm just taking for a change. we need a change. >> thank you. > thank you. >> do you mind if i pass the microphone back to my daughter? i think she has some nice solutions, if that's ok with you. >> sure. >> hi, my name is carson. i'm a junior and i was at marjorie stoneman douglas at the time of the shooting. i know that there are a lot of different solutions we can go to to help eradicate this issue, but one that stuck out to me was about the drills and protocols my teachers had to go through. hey knew what to do once the code red for an active shooter was announced, but through research i found that only 32 states require drills. of those 32 states, more than half of the counties do not go through the drills because they want to spend their resources toward something else. i know that a bill was also passed the declared that each school has to go through one drill each month. at my school, i know we go through fire drills every month and we have not had our lockdown drill yet this ear. i think a change that will increase the trainings and protocols so that if, god forbid, another shooting happens, at least all the teachers will be prepared to hopefully keep their students calm. >> thank you. >> my name is arianna klein. thank you for leading this country. you are a great leader and i appreciate the country's direction. i'm a junior that attends stoneman douglas. i want to say that everybody right now is so stuck on what they believe, they are not even listening to what other people believe. we need to listen to the other points of views. we all need to realize that we all have different points of views and we need -- the solution is not going to be singular. it's going to be multifaceted and created by a collection of different people working together. we all have to realize that we all have our opinions and together we will be able to work to a solution. this is america. this is every student, in every student -- every city everywhere. it's not small. it's everything. thank you. >> i'm carson's dad. i'm going to pass the microphone along to some of the other students. if we have a chance later on, perhaps i will speak, but i would like to students to get their chance. > very nice. >> i was at the school at the ime of the massacre. i'm only 15 years old. i'm a sophomore. 19 years ago, the first school shooting was at columbine high school. i was born into a world where i never got to experience afety and peace. there needs to be significant change in this country. this has to never happen again. people should be able to feel that when they go to school, they can be safe. and because there needs to be a change -- sorry, people need o feel safe. parents shouldn't have to go through the idea of losing their child. i know that for my dad, he was panicking. he couldn't imagine it. that shouldn't even be a possibility that goes to the mind of a parent. there needs to be some change. thank you. >> i'm justin's dad. i'll be brief. justin was texting me saying that if something happens, i love you. you can imagine what's that -- what that is like as a parent. his phone died and i didn't know what happened for another hour. 17 lives, gone. i was lucky enough to get my son home, but 17 families, this is not left and right. it's not political. it's a human issue. people are dying and we have to stop this. if he is not old enough to buy a drink, to buy a beer, he should not be able to buy a gun at 18 years old. it's just common sense. we have to do common sense. please, mr. trump. in israel, you have to be 27 to own a gun. you are only allowed one. they are taxed. you have to go through significant training. we've got to do something about this. we cannot have our children die. this is just heartbreaking. please. thank you. >> my name is sharon will -- shannon morris, a local administrator for a school in d.c., and i want to continue the conversation for our students. >> hello, i am also a local, educated here in washington, d.c., at friendship public charter schools. will allow the students who are here to voice their opinions, as well as get some f their ideas, to do that at this time. my condolences, my heart truly goes out to not just the families that have lost children in this horrific, horrific incident that has occurred, but also to our families here in the district of columbia that experience gun violence outside of our schools that directly impacts our schools. because they our our students. >> hello. i go to the technology preparatory academy in the heart of southeast, d.c. my condolences to every family here that experienced the shooting and all the students that experienced that. i'm here on behalf of my school and all the friendship schools in d.c., to be able to prevent those kinds of things happening in our school. n southeast d.c., we encounter a lot of violence. most of the time these things happen at night, but some in the daytime, to. our schools, we do take preventative measures and everything to stop that. we checked bags at the door. at first we are like -- no, we don't want to do this. but then we realized that it is for our safety. we wanted to make sure that it continues and that nothing can ever slip up for these things to happen, like in school counseling for our students to our struggling with beer, bullying. bullying triggers emotions that makes a student want to bring a weapon to school, to protect themselves, or to your revenge for a person that did something to them. we just want to have a lot of preventative measures to be in the schools. also, outside of school, to make sure that nothing can happen to us while in school. >> hello, mr. president. thank you for having us. i am the mayor of the city of parkland. we have a great city. it has been one of the safest cities in america. the fact that this happened in our city means that it can happen anywhere. we are blessed to be a close net, family oriented city. our community is coming together. we lost 17 lives, but the ripple effects throughout the community are devastating. i have spent the last week going to funerals. friends of mine lost their children. at some point we have to care enough, and be strong enough, to come up with solutions. and i hope we will. if i might, i had to bang parents who lost -- two parents who lost children in the last week, jennifer and tony, they just bury their daughter, gina, yesterday. their comments were -- tony is an airline pilot. he said that he supports the second amendment, but doesn't believe that there is a need for assault rifles. he also said that the fbi, there were signs missed and it reminded him of 9/11, so we ave to work on making sure that our protocols are in place so that people don't slip through the crack's, literally in this case. we also talked about the red flag laws. i think there's a little progress being made in florida on the red flag laws, when someone shows signs of hurting themselves or someone else, you can take their gun away from them. fred gutenberg, the service for his daughter, jamie, was last week on friday. e would like the administration to publicly acknowledge the role of guns. these two parents talked about guns and they are -- there are absolutely lots of areas where there are room -- there is room for improvement. from mental health to teacher training. but part of that is also the gun issue. it's not that it's just those and not a gun, it's all of hem. in the debate world, in the high school debate world, the kids, when they bring up legislation, you want to have impact. you don't want to bring up legislation that doesn't have a positive impact. what is the positive impact of having legislation that stops i appreciate that we are coming here to listen and that we are coming here to look at all different perspectives. we need action and need to be solution oriented. >> we are here because my daughter has no voice. she was murdered last week and taken from us. shot nine times on the third floor. we, as a country, failed our children. this shouldn't happen. we go to the airport, i can't get on a plane with bottled water. but some animal can walk into a school and shoot our children. it's just not right, and we need to come together as a country to work on what's important, and that is protecting our children. in the schools, that's the only thing that matters right now. everyone has to come together and not think about different roles. we need to come together as a country, not different parties, figuring out how to protect the schools. it's simple. it's not difficult. we protect airports, we protect concerts, stadiums, embassies, the department of education, that i walked in today, has a security guard in the elevator. how do you think that makes me feel? in the elevator, they've got a security guard. i'm very angry that this happened. it keeps happening. 9/11 happened once and they fixed everything. how many children have to get shot? it stops here with this administration, and me. i'm not going to sleep until it's fixed. mr. president, we're going to fix it. i'm going to fix it. i'm not going to rest. my boys need to live with this. you guys, look at this. me, i'm a man, but to see your children go through this? to bury their sister? that's what i keep saying, and i want this to sink in. not forget about this. we can't forget about this. these -- all of these school shootings, it doesn't make sense. fix it. should have been one school shooting and we should have fixed it. and i'm pissed. my daughter, i'm not going to see again. she's not here. she's not here. she's in the king david cemetery. that's where i go to see my kid, now. it stops. we all work together and come up with the right idea. school safety. not about gun laws of right now. that's another fight, another battle. let's fix the schools and you guys can battle it out, whatever you want. we need children safe. monday, tomorrow, whatever it is. your kids are going to go to school. you think everyone's kids are safe? i didn't think it was going to happen to me. i would have been at the school every day, if i knew it was that dangerous. it's enough. get together, work with the president, fix the schools. that's it. no other discussions. security, whatever we have to do. get the right people. the consultants. these are commodities. i'm never going to see my kid again. i want you all to know that. never, ever will i see my kid again. i want that to sink in. it is eternity. my beautiful daughter, i'm never going to see her again. it's simple. we can fix it. these are my sons, who have to deal with this, too. do you have some to say, son? >> i just want to add that it's imperative to the safety of everyone to support the free market, the free flow of ideas, and listen to people, listen to radical opinions on both sides. that's how we'll find solutions. people battling it out in a free flow of ideas. censorship has got to stop. that's how we find the solutions, by listening to everyone and having an open mind. >> this is my son, hunter. >> how are you? class of 2015, marjorie stoneman douglas. i walked the same hallways where meadow got shot and all of the other victims. we had a very effective meeting before we walked in this room. mr. vice president, as well, madam secretary, i put my trust in them and my father that we will be able to find a solution. that's all i have to say. thank you for having us. >> hi. my name is sam. i'm a student from marjorie stoneman douglas, parkland. i just want to take a second, first, to thank you for having me, mr. president, mr. vice president, madam secretary. i was on the second floor of that building. texting my mom. texting my dad. texting three of my brothers that i was never going to see them again. it occurred to me that my 14-year-old brother was directly above me in that classroom, where scott was murdered. scott got my brother in the class, he was the last kid to get back in that class. i'm sure a lot of you have read my texts on the internet with my brother. i didn't plan for them to go viral. i just wanted to share with the world. because no brothers, or sisters, or family members, or anyone should ever have to share those texts. that's why i'm here. i lost the best friend. practically a brother. i'm here to use my voice. because i know he can't. i know he's with me. cheering me on. be strong. but it's hard. to feel like this, it doesn't feel like a week. time has stood still. to feel like this ever? i can't, i can't feel comfortable in my country, knowing that people have, will have, ever going to feel like this. i want to feel safe at school. senior year, junior year, those are big years for me. when i turn my academics around, i started connecting with teachers and i started enjoying school. and now? i don't know how i'm ever going to step foot in that place again. or go to a public park afterschool. or be walking anywhere. me and my friends, we get scared when a car tries by. anywhere. and i think, i agree with hunter and huck and how we need to let ideas flow, get the problem solved. i don't understand. i turned 18 the day after, woke up to the news that my best friend was gone. i don't understand why i can still go in a store and buy a weapon of war. an ar. i was reading that a person 20 years old bought one and in five minutes got it, with an expired id. how is it that easy to buy this type of weapon? how have we not stopped this? after columbine? after sandy hook? i am sitting with a mother that lost her son. it's still happening. in australia there was a shooting at a school in 1999. you know, after that they took a lot of ideas, they put legislation together. and they stopped it. can anyone here guess how many shootings there have been in schools in australia since then? zero. we need to do something. that's why we're here. let's be strong for the fallen, who don't have a voice to speak anymore. let's never let this happen again. please, please. >> mr. president, mr. vice president, madam secretary. my story is far too well-known. i had two sons who were at sandy hook school. my eldest, who was 8 at the time, survived. my six-year-old son, dylan, did not. i have been working tirelessly on this issue for over five years now. the organization that i helped lead, sandy hook promise, is very focused on keeping kids safe in school. because no parent should go through this. every parent that sends their kid to school should know, without any question in their mind, that they are going to be coming home that day. this is not a difficult issue. you are absolutely right. there are solutions. this administration has the ability to put them in place. after sandy hook, they said that we wouldn't let this happen again. yet it has continued to happen for five years. how many more deaths can we take as a country? how many more teenagers, six-year-old and seven-year-olds, can we allowed to die? don't let that happen anymore on your watch. there's things that you can do right now. mental health, you mentioned earlier. funding for that would be very much appreciated. the stop school violence act. enabling prevention programs across america. it has already passed to the house and is in the senate right now. i urge swift passage of that. it can get a lot of help to schools. since sandy hook, there has been an increase in school safety and security. we have invested a lot in the brick and mortar and security of our schools. i also think we need to focus on prevention. how do we prevent these acts from happening? how can we help identify and get help for people who are at risk of hurting others before they pick up any weapons? that is what we need to focus on by preventing these acts. there is legislation available to you right now. there are free training programs available across the state. right now you could mandate these sorts of programs. you could ensure that schools, students, and educators are trained in how to recognize these signs and make sure that those tips are followed through. this is not difficult. these deaths are preventable. i implore you, consider your own children. you don't want to be me. no parent does. you have the ability to make a difference and save lives today. please don't waste this. thank you. >> mr. president, vice president, mrs. voss, thank you for inviting us to be here today. i'm a bit weak, i had surgery last week, but 19 years ago i went through what some of the folks here went through, are going through now. my beautiful daughter, rachel, was killed. my son, craig, was in the library that day. he looked down the barrel of two guns aimed at him. he knew he was going to die. a split second before eric and dylan pulled the trigger, the alarm system went off, it distracted them and they never came back to the table where craig was at, or i would have lost two children that day at columbine. my heart goes out to you, sir, and all of you who are going through the trauma that you experienced at heartland. my beautiful wife, the most beautiful lady in the room is right there. we started a program called rachel's challenge. it was started one year after rachel died. we have worked with some wonderful partners over the last few years. we work closely with chuck noris and his wife with a program called kickstart for kids. we worked with cal ripken junior, based on something that my daughter wrote in one of her diaries. we partnered with dr. marzano, one of the top researchers in the country. another program called love and logic. one of the largest parenting programs. all of us combining our efforts together, our organization has reached 28 million students in the last 19 years. we have seen seven school shootings prevented. we see an average of three suicides prevented every single week of the year. over 150 a year. i have a little book with me that i would like to leave with you. it has letters from students. we don't edit them. these are emails from students planning to commit suicide. we see three of those every single week, students who have changed their mind. if you don't mind, i just want to share one simple principle with you that we have learned over the years as we work with millions and millions of young people. it comes from something that you said last week, in your speech. that we must create a culture of connectedness. we must create a culture in which our classmates become our friends. that's something we have learned how to do over the years. we have 28 different programs and we see children connect with each other. every single one of these school shootings has been from young men who are disconnected. we talk a lot about mental health issues, but it actually goes deeper than that. there are a lot of mentally ill children who are kind and compassionate. we work with those children every single day of the school year, but there's always the one with the propensity to violence. one of the things we have learned, and we train young people and teachers, the focus must not be just on unity or diversity. because if you focus too much on diversity, you create division. if you focus too much on unity, it will create compromise. if we focus on relatedness and how we can relate with each other, you can celebrate diversity and see the unity take place. i'm all for diversity and unity, but the focus needs to be on how we can connect. that's something that we and our organizations have learned. we have learned how to connect students with each other, their teachers and their parents. i would love to share more, as we have a chance to do so. thank you for having us, today. >> this is an incredible group of people. we really do appreciate it. some of the folks in the back and some of my friends sitting right back here, i'd like to have you say a few words. we can learn a lot from you. we want to learn everything we can learn and we're going to go starting about two minutes after this meeting, we're going to work. this is a long-term situation that we have to solve. we'll solve it together. you've gone through extraordinary pain and we don't want others to go through the kind of pain you've gone through. wouldn't be right. so, would you like to say something? >> thank you, mr. president. my name is curtis kelly. i represent thurgood marshall academy here in the district of columbia. thank you, vice president, madam secretary, for having myself and gregory baldwin, who represents thurgood marshall. my tragedy started september 20 of last year. i have two twin sons that attend thurgood marshall and they are elite athletes, junior olympics. one of my sons was a youth councilmember for the district of columbia. in ward five. and one day he was -- this is after school, we need -- i agree we need to protect our kids in schools. but we need to protect them on safe passageways home as well. and their extra curricular activities and their parks and recreations and everything, that they try to go for their peace. my son went to college-bound, right after school, to announce that he was declaring for his college, to run track. and to further his education. and become mayor of district of columbia or something like that. on his route home, he got a text from my other son who was going to make it, but when he found out there was press, he decided not to. because locally we were burnt by the press. they're texting, watch out, there's someone in our passageway coming home. in a split second, my son was walking home maybe from this distance to where the curtains are. he was that close to home. when a thug came out to try to rob him. and he tried to rob my other son 20 minutes earlier. came back because he was upset he didn't get them students. those fast track kid. i'm going to come back and get them. he went, caught my son, got in an altercation over a cell phone. shot my son in the head. and now he's not here with us. that day i could have lost two sons. but the tragedy that my family has to live with, after losing zayir, is i have another son that attends thurgood marshall. we've been taking him to all types of family counseling and therapy and the schools that been affected, the community has been affected. local politicians say, what we want to do is stand up for our students in the community. give us some solutions as to what we can do. so myself, along with helping hands in d.c., came together and got with our attorneys and everyone else and said, ok, we're going to do some research and find out what legislation can be found that can better serve to protect our students and their safety zones and their school zones and it's been a fight because everybody shows up for photo ops. all the politicians show up to say, we're going to get it done we're going to protect our kids. but just a couple weeks later, school shooting, just like we all hearing about all these experiences, at a senior high school. kid gets shot at school. dunbar, kid gets shot at school. in our schools. on their safe passageway home. their parks and recreations. extra curricular. our students have to be protected. our students have to be protected. one local legislator asked me, how do you define students? how would a criminal define students? you would define them after you commit a crime against them. the students are crying, they're calling for a national standout day, april 20. in celebration of columbine. because the same incidents keep happening, not just in our schools, in our communities as well. to upstanding citizens. to those that are doing the right thing. and we as parents, yes, we try to fight to pass legislation just like you. locally. but nationally this campaign has grown. and it's affecting all of us. all our kids. gun violence. gun violence. so i thank you. that's my story. and we're going to keep fighting and we're going to keep trying to pass legislation and we're going to keep fighting for our students. thurgood marshall, here in the district of columbia, and across america as well. >> thank you very much. that's incredible. very sad. thank you very much. does anybody have an idea for a solution that you have gone through over the years and we've seen too much of it and were going to stop it. we have a lot of different ideas. we can name 10 of them right now. does anybody have an idea as to how to stop it? what is your recommendation to stop it? yes. >> i don't know if i'm going to say something you haven't already heard. i can tell you that in addition to all of the sorrow that we're feeling in our community right now, there's also a lot of anger. anger that the police can visit a person dozens of times and not take action. anger that the f.b.i. could get at least two credible tips and not take action. and one possible solution, which we discussed with secretary devos over lunch, was if a tragedy strikes, can we wait for the first responders to get to the campus four or five or six or seven minutes later? and one possible solution, which may not be very popular, would be to have people in the school, teachers, administrators, who have volunteered to have a firearm safely locked in the classroom, who are given training throughout the year. there are plenty of teaches that are already licensed to carry firearms. have them raise their hands to volunteer for the training and when something like this starts, the first responders are already on campus. and if it's not the teachers, you can have people that work on the campus. a custodian could be an undercover policeman. someone who works in the library or the lunch room could be an undercover policeman. he serves lunch every day. but he also has a firearm at the ready. a guidance counselor. if you can't stop it from happening, and with hundreds of millions of guns out there, i don't know if will ever be fully stopped. but the challenge becomes once it starts to end it as quickly as possible. and unfortunately you can't wait five or six or seven minutes. what my daughter said earlier, that there are 32 states that have laws that require the and yet more than half the counties -- and broward county is one of them and our school was prepared. and thank god it was only 17 lives. but when more than half of the counties won't spend the money out of their budget for the training, even though the law says they should, it will be that many more the next time. so between having the schools train for lockdowns, and possibly having armed personnel, staff, that are willing to do it -- anonymously. i don't want the kid to know who have the firearms. i don't want the shooters to know who have the firearms. i don't want people walking around with firearms on their side. but when that alert goes off and they put the kids in the closets and they put the kids under the desks, then i want the teacher to open that safe, pull out that firearm and be ready to do what needs to be done while you're waiting for the helicopters and the swat teams to come. >> [inaudible] -- 3,200 with one deputy? one. and if that deputy leaves for training, we need another deputy there. the other thing is communication. the schools have to communicate with the police. police have to communicate with child services. child services have to maybe communicate with fbi services. and for someone to bring a gun at 18 -- [inaudible] -- should be able to communicate with all of those other people that something's wrong and this child doesn't belong buying a gun like this. >> you're right. >> thank you for having us. i think what you're hearing today is there's no lack of solutions. what we have today is a lack of leadership. i'm confident that you will bring up that leadership that we need to finally take the action that needs to be taken. because there's not one solution. there's many solutions. and you're hearing some of those here today. to resolve this. to address this. our schools are soft targets. we need to harden targets while increasing our deterrence capabilities so that potential murderers know that's not going to happen. there's going to be people there ready to respond. technology will pick up an incident that occurred and it will be responded to immediately. the children and the teachers know what to do in that instance. they're communicated with effectively. we need to identify where the mental health issue is among the student population. the kids at the school knew this person. they knew he was an issue. the f.b.i. knew -- [inaudible] -- we need to close some of these loopholes in the background check system. the mental health knowledge that exists at the state level into the federal background checks. there are immediate steps we can take right now, longer term solutions. but i think we need to get started right away. and i thank you for your help on this. >> thank you. i will say again, background checks are going to be very strong. we need that. and then after we do that, when we see there is trouble, we have to nab them. you know, years ago we had mental hospitals, mental institutions, we had a lot of them. and a lot of them have closed. they've closed. some people thought it was a stigma. some people thought frankly it was the legislators thought it was too expensive. today if you catch somebody, they don't know what to do with him. he hasn't committed the crime but he may very well and there's no mental institution, there is no place to bring them. we have that a lot. even if they caught this person, i'm being nice when i use the word person, they probably wouldn't have known what to do. they're not going to put him in jail and yet -- so there's no middle ground of having that institution. where you had trained people that could handle it. and do something about it and find out how sick he really is. he is a sick guy. and he should have been nabbed a number of times frankly. your concept and your idea about concealed carry, it only works where you have people very adept at using firearms. of which you have many. and it would be teachers and coaches, if the coach had a firearm in his locker, when he ran at this guy, that coach was very brave. saved a lot of lives, i suspect. but if he had a firearm, he wouldn't have had to run. he would have shot and that would have been the end of it. this would only be obviously for people that are very adept at handling a gun. it would be -- 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. gun-free zone to a maniac, because they're all cowards, a gun-free zone is let's go in and let's attack. because bullets aren't coming back at us. and if you do this, and a lot of people are talking about it, it's certainly a point that we'll discuss, but concealed carry for teachers and for people of talent, of that type of talent. so let's say you had 20% of your teaching force, because that's pretty much the number. and you said it. an attack has lasted on average about three minutes. it takes five to eight minutes for responders, for the police to come in. so the attack is over. if you had a teacher who was adept at firearms, they could very well end the attack very quickly. and the good thing about a suggestion like that, and we're going to be looking at it very strongly and i think a lot of people are going to be opposed to it. i think a lot of people are going to like it. but the good thing is you'll have a lot of people that will like it. you can't have 100 security guards in stoneman douglas. that's a big school. it's a massive school. with a lot of acreage to cover. a lot of floor area. so that would be certainly a situation that is being discussed a lot by a lot of people. you'd have a lot of people that would be armed, that would be ready. they're professionals. they may be marines that left the marines, left the army, left the air force, and they're very adept at doing that. you'd have a lot of them and they'd be spread evenly throughout the school. the other thing i really believe that if these cowards knew that the school was well guarded from the standpoint of having pretty much professionals with great training, i think they wouldn't go into the school to start off with. i think it could very well solve your problem. so we'll be doing the background checks. we'll be doing a lot of different things. but we'll certainly be looking at ideas like that. a lot of people don't understand that airline pilots, now a lot of them carry guns. i have to say that things have changed a lot. people aren't attacking the way they would routinely attack. and maybe you have the same situation in schools. so, does anybody like that idea? here? does anybody like it? right? yes? meadow, your beautiful meadow. we talked about that. do people feel strongly against it? anybody? anybody? strongly against it? all right. look, we can understand both sides. certainly it's controversial. but we'll study that, along with many other ideas. anybody else, something to say? yes. >> i've been in thousands of schools across america. i've noticed in israel they have one entry point and it's very well guarded. i'm not asking -- [inaudible] -- not saying we should turn our schools into prisons. but i've been in so many schools where i'm speaking in an auditorium and i'll go outside to call my wife or to just get a breath of fresh air and it is so easy for me to get back into that school. i'm an unknown adult to many of those students. i can tap on a window and they'll open the door for me or i can catch someone coming out the side door and easily get in. so one of the things that i have thought a lot about in seeing this around the country is we have really soft entry points. into schools. >> that true. and we have to do something about that. >> good afternoon. first, my heart goes out to everyone who's experiencing this tragedy right now. i'm currently dean of students at friendship tech prep. which is in the heart of southeast d.c. which is in ward eight. which is one of the most impoverished wards in d.c. however, at our school, just a solution, we actually have checkpoints. when a student walks in the door we actually have metal detectors. i oftentimes see that in urban education. we actually have an x-ray machine, students put their bags through. and right after this incident happened, a parent who didn't so much agree with it at first, sent me an email saying thank you. because now i see exactly what's happening. and so we oftentimes use that t.s.a. model. when a student comes in, we have somebody at the door to greet them to do a check-in, just to see how they feel. we have certain point people where i know this person's not feeling so well so they won't get past point one. they go through the metal detector. their bag goes through the machine. at the end of the day, just talking to my students riding over today, they say, well, i feel safe. and you come outside and talk about mental hospitals, our school is right across the street from a shutdown mental hospital. we have, you know, if you were to come over to the streets you'd be like, oh, my god. but once you get inside the building, we have that family feel. we have those checkin points. we have it where every visitor that comes into our building has to go through these checkpoints to ensure that our students get home safe. to ensure that our staff members get home safe. and these are just minor solutions. i will say i'm against having a teacher with a gun in a building. teachers are emotional. people are emotional. so, i think that is a huge factor. however, but having students, and you may have to go staffers going through these check points to make sure that we're talking about, they don't have any physical metal in them and/or even in our building, our students don't even carry cell phones because we consider, that's a threat. it's taking away from their learning. they turn in their cell phones. those things of ensuring our kids are there at the moment to live the moment, to enjoy school, they get that joy factor, they get that family feel. they're able now to connect with one another and able to communicate and not have to worry about looking over their shoulder when they walk out of the building. they know everyone has been through a metal check. bags have been checked. that's just a solution. my heart goes out to everyone who has been through this tragedy. . >> very well said. >> thank you. >> thank you for being open to hearing all forms of solutions. i truly appreciate that. one point on the mental health issue, and i think it's important to note that someone with a mental illness who is highly unlikely to ever commit an act of violence, it's a very, very small percentage. what we're really doing here is more with a lack of mental wellness. this is around anger and fear. and that's not something that you can diagnose and put in mental health hospitals. this is more about funding for mental health services. to help these individuals that are at risk. especially when we think about suicide. teen suicide, suicide is the number two killer of our children as i understand, right , now. a lot of these suicides are performed with firearms. which makes them unfavorable. so the idea of mental health and being able to identify who is at risk and considering these issues, who is going into crisis, that is incredibly important. i appreciate the point on arming teachers. it's not personally something that i support. rather than arm them with a firearm, i'd rather arm them with the knowledge of how to prevent these acts from happening in the first place. how do you identify the kids in your class that are most at risk and then, most importantly, within a school, how do we have a safety assessment program so that schools know how to deal with all these threats, have established protocols to deal with them and get underneath the surface of what's going on in that child's life. find out why they're on this pathway behavior and intervene. this is about prevention. there are some fabulous solutions being talked about today which still go to imminent , danger. let's talk about prevention. there's so much that we can do to help people before it reaches that point. and i urge you, please, stay focused on that as well. it is the gun, it's the person behind the gun. and it's about helping people before they ever reach that point. >> thank you. i fully respect all of our amendments, including the second. but in maryland they have proven that the second amendment does not protect these types of weapons. they have banned over 45 different kinds of assault weapons, including the a.r. including the a.r. they have banned -- they have limited magazine sizes. they have proven that it's not like we have to lose our second amendment. the second amendment, i believe, was for defense. i fully respect that. but these are not weapons of defense. these are weapons of war. and i just -- i still can't fathom that i'm -- myself, am able to purchase one. anyone? >> i'd like to talk, mr. president. i couldn't agree -- i'm not here to debate. but i lost my sister. like mr. president said, if you can find 20% of maybe retired law enforcement officers or teachers that can go through discrete training to carry a firearm, it could have been a very different situation. like he said, law enforcement, it takes them seven minutes, eight minutes to get there. if a teacher or a security guard has a concealed license, and a firearm on their waist, they're able to easily stop the situation. or the bad guy, i'll put it that way, would not even go near the school knowing that someone can fight back against them. also, i believe that it's insanity that they would even open the gates up 20 minutes before school ends. they're supposed to protect us and the children. so in the future, we need more security, we need more firearms on campus. we need better background checks. and we need to study more on mental health. and i want to thank everyone for their condolences and that's my only argument. thank you. >> thank you. my deepest condolences for those who have lost family and friends. my name is curtis lawrence. i'm a principal at friendship collegiate academy. like mr. brandon had said, we have security, we also have m.p.d. on staff that we hire to make sure that things aren't coming into our school. and also this immediately in the mornings and during dismissal, immediately around the school, to protect our kids as they leave. but last month we did suffer a loss, one of our ninth graders was gunned down walking distance from the school. and so when we talk about safe passage, i think in looking at what's happening with gun violence, with our scholars and students, i'm saying take a double approach. you have to protect kids that are in school. as a president you have different laws in different states. definitely where they don't have the necessary security as we may have of getting in, then we have to think of what are those solutions for the kids in florida that are going to schools with that, to make sure that they're safe in school. and then places like here in d.c., what are those solutions to make sure kids are able to get home and to school safely. so i think it's a two-pronged approach and i know you're in a specific position to, as you meet with the governors and they have their different laws, coming from these different perspectives, to make them own that two-pronged approach. to protect them in school and protect them as well out of school. going back and forth. >> thank you so much and thank you, vice president, and madam secretary, for convening this and for allowing us all the opportunity to speak about this. very serious problem. my heart absolutely breaks for the families of parkland. i have a sense of what you're going through now. i've been going through it for five years. this is my son daniel. he was 7 years old. when he was shot to death in his first grade classroom in sandy hook elementary school just a little over five years ago. my wife, jackie, could not be here today because she's a school teacher and she takes that job seriously and sent me as the ambassador. jackie is a career educator and she will tell you she has spent over a decade in the bronx. and she will tell you that school teachers have more than enough responsibilities right now than to have to have the awesome responsibility of lethal force to take a life. [applause] thank you. nobody wants to see a shootout in a school. and a deranged sociopath on his way to commit an act of murder in a school with the outcome, knowing the outcome is going to be suicide, is not going to care if there's somebody there with a gun. that's their plan anyway. i am going to build on what my friend and colleague said. we tried this legislative approach. i've been in this building before, many times wringing our hands, pleading with legislators. what can we do? until we finally said, we have to go home and do this ourselves. and we built something. sandy hook promise has built something that works. we train students and we train teachers and we train educators with the tools, how to recognize these people. and with the tools of how to intervene and with the tools to get them to the help they need before they pick up a gun or any other weapon and commit a horrible tragedy. it works. we don't charge for it. we're not asking for money. we've already stopped school shootings. we've already prevented suicides. we've already captured other social issues like bullying and cutting. we know that it works. we have a solution right here. we're asking for you to please help. we need to do this nationally. now. thank you. >> mr. president, i'd like to take the opportunity to thank you and the vice president and to thank everyone here for joining us today, for telling your stories for sharing your perspectives and please know that this is the beginning of a long conversation. we are committed to seeing a solution to this very, very tragic and horrible situation. and so know that our hearts will continue to be with all of the families affected here. and thank you again for being with us today. president trump: thank you, betsy and thank you, mike, and thank you, everybody, for being with us. we are going to work very hard. very difficult and very complex but we will find a solution. we have been looking at this issue for a long time. we will be back in a more positive light we will get there -- positive light. we will get there. if you have any suggestions because there are many ideas. some are very good, some are not good, some are very stringent and a lot of people think they work. some less so. anything in addition to what we are going to do in addition to background checks -- we are going to look very storm into the mental health aspect of what is going on. this was a case where this was a person who was very sick. people knew he was very sick. i know law-enforcement so i believe a lot from this event. we are going to look at the institutions, what you do when you find someone like this. we are going to look at that whole aspect of what is going on. i want to thank everybody. you have been through a lot, more than you ever thought possible. more than you ever thought humanly possible. all i can say is we are fighting hard for you. we will not stop. we will not stop. we are going to get there. it can be nothing worse than what you have gone through. again, thank you for your ideas. thank you for pouring out your hearts. the world is watching. we are going to come up with solutions. god bless you all. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [indiscernible] >> "washington journal" is next. the political conservative action conference was this morning. cruz,l also hear from ted the education secretary, and the labor secretary. c-span, where history unfolds daily. created as an was public service by america's cable television companies. today we continue to bring you unfiltered coverage of congress, the white house, the supreme court, and public policy of vents in washington dc and around the country. c-span is brought to you by your satellite or cable provider. >> coming up, formeer