To defend ‘right’ to carry guns, Trump seeks votes
BROADSIDE Might as well ban vans, trucks as those are terrorists’ new weapons
WASHINGTON: US president Donald Trump issued a full-throated endorsement of gun rights as championed by their most powerful representative, The National Rifle Association, at the body’s annual convention in Dallas, Texas.
“You’re going to keep those rights,” Trump said of gun rights in a 45-minute election rally-style speech in which he jumped through various topics, as the pro-gun audience cheered him on. This was a stark departure from his defiant tone after the February 14 shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in which 17 people including 14 students were killed by a former student.
On Friday, he was back in the fold. “Your Second Amendment rights are under siege. But they will never, ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”
“If we’re going to outlaw guns like so many people want to do— Democrats—you better get out and vote,” he said, seeking support for Republican candidates in the mid-term elections.
“We are going to have to outlaw immediately all vans and trucks which are now the new form of death for the maniac terrorists. Right? So let’s ban, immediately, all trucks, all vans, maybe all cars. How about cars? Let’s ban them. Let’s not sell any more cars,” he went on to add.
Trump has attended every NRA annual convention in the last five years, and for the second time as president. But never has the meet been attended by both the president and the vice president in the association’s 147-year history. Vice-President Mike Pence spoke just ahead of Trump. “We will end this evil and protect our liberties at the same time,” he said referring to the Florida high school shooting.
Trump spoke of measures taken since the shooting to improve security at schools and plugged his controversial, but NRA-backed, proposal to arm teachers. “There is no stronger deterrent for a sick individual than the knowledge that their attack will end their life and will end in total failure. When they know that, they’re not going in. You’re not going to have school attacks.”
After the shooting at Parkland high school in Florida, Trump had tilted away from the NRA, suggesting publicly once, “We have to fight them every once in a while.”
KNIVES, KNIVES, KNIVES, IN LONDON
Trump said an unnamed London hospital had “blood all over the “I recently read a story that, in London, which has unbelievably tough gun laws, a once very prestigious hospital...is like a war zone for horrible stabbing wounds,” Trump said.
The president did not identify the source of the information or the hospital.
“They say it’s as bad as a military war-zone hospital,” Trump said. “Knives, knives, knives. London hasn’t been used to that. They’re getting used to it. It’s pretty tough.”
London has experienced a surge in violent crime this year, with 52 people killed in the first 100 days of 2018.
US President Donald Trump greets supporters at an event of the gun lobby group NRA. AFP
It’s kind of hypocritical of him to go there after saying that so many politicians bow to the NRA. It proves that his heart and his wallet are in the same place.
DAVID HOGG, student who survived the Parkland shooting floors” from an epidemic of stabbings, suggesting that nations with tougher gun laws have as much violent crime as the US.