Trump defends right to bear arms
US President backs gun owners at NRA meeting in Dallas.
Dallas: US President Donald Trump rallied gun owners in Texas, summarily rejecting calls for stricter laws despite a high school massacre in Florida that fuelled public demands for change.
Making a pilgrimage to the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Dallas on Friday, Trump tackled head-on the controversy over his visit, which comes three months after a classroom bloodbath that shocked the world.
Political advisers, he said, had told him not to go, to which he responded “bye, bye, got to get on a plane,” prompting extended cheers.
“We have to do the right thing,” he said.
It is the second year running that Trump has addressed the guntoting, hat-waving jamboree, but the first time since the school massacre in Parkland, Florida.
Trump made only a brief allusion to the Feb 14 high school rampage in Parkland, signalling a return to politics as normal, as his Republicans head into sharply contested mid-term elections.
“Our hearts break for every American who has suffered,” Trump said, while dismissing calls for curbs on civilians’ ability to buy semi-automatic weapons.
“It’s not enough to simply take actions that make us feel like we are making a difference,” he said.
“In America we trust the people to be wise and to be good.”
Trump’s warm up act, VicePresident Mike Pence, went as far as to say there was too much coverage of the sorrow of mass shootings and not enough of “good guys” with guns.
The White House duo instead doled out red meat to their political base, trashing the “fake news” media and the “witch hunt” Russia investigation, endorsing Republican election wannabes and praising the “great American flag.”
Public demands for stricter gun control measures soared after 17 people were shot dead in Parkland, with students mobilising hundreds of thousands of people in Washington on March 24 for a mass display of outrage.
But the Republican-controlled Congress has taken little action and polls indicate public sentiment in favour of stricter gun laws is cooling, as it has after previous mass shootings.
Aides promised a stem-winder of a speech – with one eye on the electoral calendar – and Trump delivered.
Just a 10 minute walk from the plaza where his predecessor John F. Kennedy was shot dead, the 45th president vowed that the right to bear arms would “never ever be under siege as long as I am president”.
He slammed countries like France and Britain, which have tough gun laws, claiming attacks and stabbings could have been prevented if only citizens were armed – at one point mimicking the assailants in the Paris Bataclan attack of November 2015 picking out their victims: “Boom! Come over here. Boom! Come over here.”
Trump had flirted with tougher gun laws in the wake of the Parkland attack, but under pressure from donors and facing a Democratic landslide in Congressional elections this November, he quickly backtracked.
The four-day NRA gathering in Dallas brings together hundreds of exhibitors as well as special events for members like the “Leadership Forum” where Trump gave his address. With more than five million members, the NRA is long established as a powerful political force in the United States and fierce defender of the constitutional right to bear arms.
Since the massacre in Parkland, Trump has made clear he would not back a ban on assault rifles, a key demand of the student protesters.
Instead he has proposed a ban on “bump stocks,” devices used to convert semi-automatic weapons into automatic-like weapons by accelerating their rate of fire.
Bump stocks were used by the gunman who mowed down 58 people at a country music concert in Las Vegas in October, the deadliest such attack in modern US history. — AFP