In an interview with Fox & Friends on Sunday, Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, said that he both does not want guns in classrooms and thinks that some classrooms should have guns.
The statement contradicts a tweet he sent out late Saturday night, in response to a speech by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton criticizing Trump for past statements claiming he would do away with gun-free zones in schools.
Crooked Hillary said that I want guns brought into the school classroom. Wrong!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 22, 2016
“I’m not advocating guns in classrooms,” Trump said on Sunday, “but remember in some cases — a lot of people made this case — teachers should have guns, trained teachers should have guns in classrooms.”
Trump’s claim that he is “not advocating guns in classrooms” is a stark reversal from the position he took during a speech at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting Friday, where he told a crowd of roughly 80,000 NRA members that he would do away with gun-free zones.
The presumptive nominee has criticized gun-free zones in the past, notably in the wake of the October mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, which left 10 dead.
“It was a gun-free zone,” Trump said during a speech days after the incident. “I will tell you — if you had a couple of the teachers or somebody with guns in that room, you would have been a hell of a lot better off.” (Umpqua Community College was not a gun-free zone.)
Trump also criticized gun control laws in the wake of the November terrorist attacks in Paris, arguing that the country’s strict gun laws contributed to the attack. He said that if he had been in the attack, armed with a gun, “it would have been a much, much different result.”
Gun’s rights advocates have seized upon the issue of gun-free zones, claiming that terrorists and shooters specifically target areas where guns are not permitted, and fewer violent incidents occur in areas where people are allowed to carry guns.
The statistics, however, don’t support that theory. According to an FBI study of active shooter incidents between 2000 and 2013, 21 active shooting incidents were stopped by unarmed civilians, while just one was stopped by an armed civilian.