'Follow the money': CNN's Charles Blow calls BS on Trump's billion-dollar call to arm teachers

If President Donald Trump is serious about his call to arm teachers in the wake of the deadly mass shooting on Valentine's Day in Parkland, Florida, he'll have to figure out how to pay for it, CNN commentator and New York Times columnist Charles Blow remarked on Monday.

"In all these discussions, I always like to try to follow the money," Blow told CNN host Erica Hill.

Citing a Washington Post article that analyzed how much it would cost to purchase those guns, the columnist noted the government would have to spend upwards of a billion dollars to buy more than 718,000 guns for teachers and train them on how to use the firearms.

Nevertheless, Blow argued that gun violence as it currently stands is already expensive.

"A conservative estimate of how much gun violence costs America, which is largely on the shoulders of taxpayers, is $230 billion — with a "b" — a year," Blow noted. "That's everything from health services to police investigations to incarcerations."

"They're not proposing anything that's gonna hurt gun manufacturers and they are proposing a lot of things that are going to shift burden onto taxpayers' backs instead of dealing with the guns," he concluded.

Watch below, via CNN: