John Hickenlooper, on prospect of arming teachers, says “this is not something they’d be good at”

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said other gun-control measures should be explored and taken before there is talk of arming teachers as a response to school shootings like the one earlier this month in south Florida.

“I think we’ve got to look at everything on the table, but certainly raising the age where people — where kids — can buy automatic weapons, looking at universal background checks — some of this basic blocking and tackling makes a lot more sense, of really getting that in place, before you start talking about trying to arm people who really in many cases aren’t cut out for it,” the Democrat said in an interview Tuesday morning on National Public Radio. “This is not something they’d be good at.”

The sale of new automatic weapons in the U.S. has been banned for decades, though there have been recent calls to raise the minimum age to buy semi-automatic, assault-style rifles like the AR-15 from 18 to 21. A spokeswoman for Hickenlooper says he misspoke and was talking about the prospect of raising the minimum age for people to buy semi-automatic weapons.

Hickenlooper spoke on the network’s Morning Edition program after he and other governors met with President Donald Trump on Monday to discuss firearms and school safety.

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