PHOENIX - President Trump said Thursday he supports a plan to arm teachers in schools across the country.
Putting aside the merits and the arguments over the best course of action, how much would that cost?
We did the math based on the most likely scenarios: minimum training, advanced training and Newt Gingrich's plan to station armed guards.
Armed teachers
First, the president said he wants one out of five teachers armed. In Arizona, that comes out to 9,773 teachers.
Second, we have to determine the level of training. A basic gun class for beginners will run about $60. It includes the bare minimum of gun handling and firing a few rounds.
For all teachers, that comes to $586,392.
The state would also have to buy guns for those teachers, which can drastically change the price. The world's most popular handgun, and in some respects the simplest, is the Glock 17, which retails for around $500.
To give all 9,773 teachers a Glock, would cost $4,472,892.
If teachers were to receive advanced training in combat scenarios and school shooting-specific drills, there's a program called FASTER, run specifically for teachers. The Washington Post reported the training cost $1,000 per teacher.
Add in the cost of the guns and the total is $10,359,392 -- that's a million dollars more than the entire 2017 budget for the Arizona Department of Education.
Armed guards
To determine the cost of Newt Gingrich's plan to place armed guards in schools, we determined there are 2,200 schools in Arizona. Gingrich wanted between six and eight, so we split the difference and estimated seven guards per school.
A study in 2013 estimated the cost of providing trained, armed guards in schools and determined the cost of training, gear, supervision and salary of a guard to be an estimated $80,000.
Added up, the cost of guards in schools in Arizona would be $1,232,000,000.
Put a simpler way, $1 billion is one tenth of the entire Arizona state budget proposed by Governor Doug Ducey for 2018.
How much it would cost you
In terms of spreading this cost out among taxpayers, minimum training would add $1.65 to your annual income taxes, the advanced training would add $3.13 and armed guards would add $373.
However, those costs do not take into account the increased cost of insurance for schools or the cost of running such a program, which would vary drastically depending on how much a school pays and the risks associated.