Parkland father Andrew Pollack is urging support for U.S. President Donald Trump on the grounds he is convinced Trump is only the person serious about making schools safe.
Pollack’s daughter, Meadow, was killed in the February 14, 2018, shooting that also took the lives of 16 others.
He used a Townhall op-ed to explain that school safety is largely overlooked until an attack occurs, at which point the establishment media carries news of the attack so as to push gun control. Then they return to their normal pattern of criticizing Trump and carrying water for Democrats.
Pollack wrote:
When I met with [President Trump] in the Oval Office, I told him that he should form a federal fact-finding commission to gather and spread best practices for school safety. President Trump told me that he would. And he did. The report his administration compiled was unprecedented, and has helped school leaders all over the country take concrete steps to making their schools safer.
I sat next to President Trump when that report was released. A table full of families of victims and school safety experts spent an hour discussing the findings. Then the President opened up the floor to media questions.
The first question: “Mr. President – are you still planning on shutting down the government?”
Trump turned to me and said, “Can you believe these people, Andy? We just spent an hour talking about school safety and this is all they care about. I have to deal with these people every day.”
While the media was asking about “shutting down the government” Pollack was pushing to have the “leniency policies pioneered at Broward” repealed, so other families would not suffer loss at the hands of an individual whose “behavior was consistently swept under the rug by school officials.” Pollack notes the “leniency policies” were birthed by the Obama Department of Education, and are therefore probably in play in various school districts around the country.
Moreover, Pollack is pushing a School Safety Grant program, that provides money to schools to enable them to update communications/technology so as to be in touch with first responders in real time in the event of an emergency.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach that will end attacks on schools or other soft targets. But hardening such targets reduces their attractiveness to shooters and changing policies along the way to remove bad actors tends toward added safety as well. Pollack is convinced President Trump is the man for the job when it comes to ensuring these steps toward safety actually take place.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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