President Donald Trump is proposing the use of Department of Justice funding to help states train and arm school personnel as part of his school safety policy proposal released Sunday.

In addition to supporting firearm training for volunteer educators across the country, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos will also chair a federal commission on school safety geared toward recommending policy and funding proposals for school violence prevention.

The White House billed the new two-pronged approach as a "pragmatic plan to dramatically increase school safety immediately."

"There has been a lot of talk and too little action," DeVos said on a call Sunday. "There are steps that can be taken right away to protect students."



Tapping into Justice Department resources and finances, the government will help states partner with law enforcement agencies to train school personnel who volunteer, the White House explained. Arming educators has been a divisive, contested issue since Trump floated the idea at a listening session with school shooting survivors, with many students and parents from Parkland, Florida, decrying the idea of putting more guns on campus as a way to thwart mass school shootings.

Sunday, officials had said Trump would not be issuing any mandates to raise the age requirement so that a person has to be 21 years old to purchase a gun, and will leave the decision up to the states.



Monday morning, the president tweeted that he would be waiting to see how states decide to implement age limits on when citizens may own guns, "watching court cases and rulings before acting."

