Updated
US President Donald Trump has called for teachers to be "highly trained, gun adept", saying gun-free schools are "a magnet for bad people", following last week's school massacre in Florida.
Mr Trump pushed for an offensive strategy, warning "defence alone won't work".
Mr Trump hoped armed teachers could "solve the problem instantly, before police arrive".
He said giving concealed guns to teachers would mean "far more assets at much less cost than guards".
But Mr Trump proposed only arming teachers with "military or specialist training experience".
He first raised the idea of arming teachers during an emotional, hour-long discussion with students who survived the attack on Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and a parent whose child did not.
Seventeen students and staff members were killed in the February 14 attack.
A 19-year-old former student at the school, Nikolas Cruz, has been charged with carrying out the shooting. Authorities say he was armed with a semiautomatic AR-15 assault-style rifle.
Trump to push for gun reform
Mr Trump was meeting with politicians overnight (AEDT) "to discuss school safety", and with governors next week.
He said he would push for gun reform — including raising the age limit to purchase firearms to 21.
He repeated calls for comprehensive background checks on people wishing to buy a gun "with an emphasis on mental health" and to end the sale of bump stocks, which convert semi-automatic weapons into automatic guns.
"Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue — I hope!" he tweeted.
Mr Trump, a Republican who has backed gun rights, also defended the National Rifle Association (NRA), saying it "will do the right thing".
"What many people don't understand, or don't want to understand, is that Wayne, Chris and the folks who work so hard at the NRA are great people and great American patriots," he said.
There has been some congressional support for Mr Trump's move to ban bump stocks.
Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, said the move to ban bump stocks was "long overdue", but he said more had to be done, adding "weapons of war do not belong on our streets".
Congressman Steve Stivers, who heads the Republicans' re-election campaign, also supported the move, saying bump stocks "only serve to spread shots in as wide of range and as quickly as possible, providing no legitimate sporting use and have no place in our communities".
ABC/Reuters
Topics: crime, donald-trump, laws, government-and-politics, law-crime-and-justice, murder-and-manslaughter, united-states
First posted