Trump backs off NRA gun control promise

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has abandoned his live-on-television promise to work for gun control measures opposed by the National Rifle Association, instead bowing to the gun group and embracing its agenda of armed teachers and incremental improvements to the existing background check system.

After the Florida high school massacre last month, Trump explicitly called for raising the age limit to purchase rifles and backed 2013 legislation for near-universal background checks. He chided Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, R-Pa., who helped write that background check legislation, accusing him of rejecting the higher age limit “because you’re afraid of the NRA.”

But on Monday, it was the president who seemed to knuckle under, again dramatizing the sway the NRA still maintains in Republican circles. Students around the country might be massing for a march on Washington on March 24. The victims and survivors of school shootings from Connecticut to Florida may be pushing their states to move on gun control.

But from Capitol Hill to the White House, the NRA still calls the shots.

“To no one’s surprise, the president’s words of support for stronger gun safety laws proved to be hollow,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said. “Responding to the murder of 17 students and educators by endorsing the gun lobby’s platform is a shameful abdication of the president’s responsibility to lead. Shame on you, Mr. President.”