Talking the talk but not walking the walk

The deadly school shooting in Florida has moved President Trump to call for a ban on devices that turn legal firearms into deadly automatic assault rifles. But some gun control supporters expressed scepticism: He has promised action before in response to a mass killing, only to drop it when Americans’ attention wanes.

Trump’s foray into policy talks is being met with scepticism based on his track record in office, his fluid stances on gun control and his close relationship with the National Rifle Assn. He backed an assault weapons ban and a longer waiting period for gun purchases in 2000, writing about it in one of his books, and then reversed that stance when he built a presidential campaign on an absolutist pro-gun interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.

Trump’s idea to ban bump stocks is not a new one. After the Las Vegas mass shooting in October, he signalled a willingness to discuss regulating or banning the kits that allow people — like the shooter in that case, who fired down on a crowd from his hotel suite — to make their legal semiautomatic rifles operate like illegal, rapid-fire automatic weapons. The administration later clarified that any crackdown should be regulatory, not statutory. That stance is shared by the NRA, which opposes any new gun control laws.

The result is that nothing happened, and the country moved on. Thus did the reaction to the Vegas massacre, the nation’s worst mass murder in modern times, follow a familiar pattern of years of gun control debates: Gun rights advocates stalled serious policy discussion after the tragedy by saying it was too soon to think of anything but the victims, yet as time passed so did the impetus for action.

For a long time before his 2016 campaign, Trump branded himself as a non-partisan moderate on the issue of gun control. In 2000 he wrote that he generally opposed gun control but that he was OK with certain restrictions, and he attacked Republicans for their pro-NRA rigidity.

Trump held that point of view until he began gearing up for his run for the presidency. As social conservatives flocked to his rallies, he turned increasingly hard-line in opposing any limitations on gun ownership.

In the White House, he has acted in keeping with that posture. His appointees have quietly chipped away at the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the federal system that stores consult to make sure buyers are eligible to purchase guns.

The administration officials narrowed a few legal definitions to make it harder to classify would-be gun buyers as ineligible.