Trump’s 21-gun retreat
Remember when Donald Trump shocked the nation by declaring his openness to a host of gun-control measures, including the universal background checks 97% of Americans support? Remember when he expressed incredulity that it’s legal to buy an assault rifle before turning 21, and said government should take guns from unstable people first, and go to court second?
Remember when he called two senators “afraid of the NRA,” even as he declared himself too bold to buckle to their influence?
Remember when he insisted that Republicans in the House decouple their disastrous concealed carry reciprocity legislation — which would drag state and local gun laws down to the lowest common denominator — from legislation fixing the existing background check system?
That was three days ago. Or, in Trump time, a lifetime. Since the moment the President revealed himself of being at least momentarily capable of rational thinking on combating America’s gun scourge, he has predictably, depressingly but still jarringly reverted to his mean.
The President who purported to be interested in leading the conversation on ending mass shootings sat back Thursday as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his formerly august body would turn away from gun legislation and debate a banking bill next week.
Yep, that’s urgent business, unraveling core protections in the Dodd-Frank law.
It may look like McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan are the leading cowards, but it is Gen. Trump who leads the great retreat.
His press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Thursday mumbled some gobbledygook that while her boss “conceptually” “still supports raising the age” for all gun purchases, “he also knows there’s not a lot of broad support for that.”
According to a recent poll, 81% of the American people support the idea.
Sanders added that what Trump — who three days ago told senators and congressmen, “You have to (be) very, very powerful on background checks” — prefers is “not necessarily universal background checks.”
Coincidence: The President has had two private meetings with NRA leadership over the past week. (What luck they had getting two audiences with the leader of the free world within seven days!)
One predated the meeting at which he expressed openness to new gun laws. The other came Thursday night, the gun lobby’s bid to bring their off-the-reservation man back into its fold.
Now, watch Trump shift to utter distractions like violent video games, which exhaustive research has proven have no link to actual violence.
Watch him hunker down on his call to arm teachers, as though more weapons in more hands in more schools will do anything but create more problems.
Watch him talk more and more about improving mental health care — which, while vitally important, is a complement to and not a substitute for ending nearly unlimited access to guns and ammunition.
Watch him say and do whatever it takes to avoid following through on that spasm of gun sanity on display the other day.