Barron Trump’s Private School Just Signed a Letter Asking the President to Rethink His Gun Control Strategy

When First Lady Melania Trump and the youngest of the president’s five kids, Barron, moved to DC, the family chose St. Andrew’s Episcopal School for the pre-teen to attend. While they were surely enticed by the school’s innovative curriculum, it’s doubtful that Trump parents would have expected that the school would eventually co-sign a letter asking the president to rethink his ideas around arming teachers in schools in an attempt to make them safer. This week, that’s exactly what happened.

St. Andrew’s was one of the dozens of area schools to sign the letter, published today in the Baltimore Sun imploring that the administration use different tactics to help curb violence in schools.

“We urge our president, our Congress, and our state leaders to enact specific, rigorous measures to reduce gun violence in our society, particularly in our schools,” the letter reads, in part.

It goes on: “We need a robust system of registration and background checks, with a particular eye toward weapons capable of rapidly firing a vast number of deadly shots. We need stronger mental health services and more effective communication among agencies responsible for the well-being of children, adults and families. What we do not need is to arm our teachers with guns, which is dangerous and antithetical to our profession as educators.”

Since the school shooting in Parkland, FL, the president has gone back and forth on various ideas over how to curb school shootings, although no national plan has been enacted. After suggesting that teachers be armed across the country, the president eventually acknowledged that raising the minimum age for buying guns might be a good idea, a stance he has since distanced himself from.

This week, the president appears to be back to his NRA-approved positions on gun legislation and is upholding the NRA’s reading of the 2nd Amendment. With little action from Washington, many states have taken gun control into their own hands, including Florida, which signed a last-minute law into place last Friday helping to restrict access to automatic weapons.

(Photos via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images + Joe Raedle/Getty Images)