BAKER: TRUMP’S GUARD REMARK NOT ‘HELPFUL’
Says focus should be on why
Gov. Charlie Baker characterized President Trump’s suggestion that an armed guard could have prevented the deadly shooting Saturday in a Pittsburgh synagogue as not “helpful” yesterday.
“I think the comments about whether or not there was somebody who was armed inside the building weren’t helpful,” Baker told the Herald. “That’s not really what people are focused on at this point in time. What they’re focused on is learning more about why this man did this, whether there were pre-emptive opportunities associated with his behavior, which apparently there may have been, and I think that’s really where our focus should be.”
Trump told reporters, “If there was an armed guard inside the temple, they would have been able to stop him," referencing the gunman who opened fire in the Tree of Life congregation Saturday, killing 11 people and injuring six others in one of the deadliest attacks on Jews in U.S. history.
Baker said Massachusetts takes a preemptive approach with the Hate Crimes Task Force, which he said represents most of the denominations in the state.
“We have the law enforcement community at the federal, state and local level working with the folks in the faith community on this stuff,” Baker said. “Our focus should be, what are the things we can do from a pre-emptive point of view, intelligence gathering and a planning point of view to ensure that we can prevent these things from happening.”
The governor commended the president’s denunciation of the shooting, however, which Trump referred to as “anti-Semitic” and “pure evil.”
“I thought the president’s comments about the horrific and appalling nature of the attack on the synagogue was spot on,” Baker said.
During remarks at the Future Farmers of America convention in Indianapolis, Trump said, “You wouldn’t think this would be possible in this day and age, but we just don’t seem to learn from the past.”
During a debate on WCVB’s “On the Record” yesterday, Baker’s opponent in the the race for governor, Jay Gonzalez, said Trump’s remark about armed guards at churches was “just wrong.” He also called for the ban of manufacturing assault weapons in Massachusetts.
“We got a president who’s inciting this hate,” Gonzalez said. “This is another incident of a mass shooting with an assault weapon. The NRA has a stranglehold on our Congress. They’re not doing what they need to do to put common sense gun laws in place . ... We should be doing everything we can to reduce gun violence.”