By now the American public is desensitized to some of the comments that come out of Donald Trump’s mouth. In the wake of the tragedy that occurred Friday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, Donald Trump said on Saturday that if the teachers had been armed during the attack then the shooting wouldn’t have been as tragic. As a GOP candidate, Trump has supported the Second Amendment saying that mental illness is the cause of shootings such as the one that occurred on Friday, not the firearms themselves. In fact, Trump has stated that he has a license to carry a firearm in the state of New York and that if he were to be attacked on the street, he would “respond.”

While school shootings are a sensitive and serious topic, they do raise an important debate about gun violence. “I really think that gun control has evolved into a large topic of discussion in our nation and something needs to be done to restrict how easy it is to purchase a gun. Donald Trump is entitled to his opinion but I don’t believe that arming teachers with weapons is a good solution,” said senior, Sam Applebaum.

But the real question is, what makes Donald Trump’s solution the incorrect one? “Mr. Trump and others who support the idea of arming teachers don’t seem to be thinking about the underlying causes of school shootings nor are they fully reflecting on the possible unintended consequences of their actions. It seems to me that arming teachers would be the absolute opposite of what we should be doing to help end school shootings. More guns do not make people safer, but rather create situations where shootings, intentional or not, are more likely,” says WHHS History teacher, Thomas Mohan.

Mohan and a million other Americans are all asking the same question in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting: are guns meant to protect the American public or are they meant to create havoc? Based on his comments, we can conclude what Donald Trump’s answer would be to that question.