US President Donald Trump promised strong background checks and mental health screenings for gun buyers after hearing pleas from survivors of the recent Florida school shooting and affected families on Wednesday.
He also suggested the possibility of arming teachers during the televised White House meeting, which came as students staged street protests across the country to demand stricter gun laws following a student assault that left 17 dead.
"We're going to be very strong on background checks ... very strong on the mental health," Trump told students and family members affected by last week's high school massacre in Florida and other past mass shootings.
The president suggested that some educators could be trained in the use of firearms to deter potential shooters, reports Xinhua.
"It's called concealed carry," Trump said. "Where a teacher would have a concealed gun on them, they would go for special training and they would be there, and you would no longer have a gun-free zone."
"A gun-free zone is, let's go in and let's attack," he said.
"You can't have 100 security guards in the Stoneman Douglas," he said, referring to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, described as "very sick" by Trump, killed 14 students and three teachers, with an AR-15 style assault rifle last week.
"It would be teachers and coaches," Trump said. He said that if the school's assistant football coach Aaron Feis who shielded students from being shot had a firearm in his locker, he could have shot the shooter instead of running at him.
However, Trump conceded that concealed carry -- carrying a concealed firearm in public -- "only works" with people who are "very adept at using firearms."
Those remarks came a day after Trump said he has recommended that "bump stocks," an accessory that enables semi-automatic weapons to fire hundreds of rounds a minute, be banned.
