Trump’s pathetic response to Fla. school massacre

It happened again. Nikolas Cruz, a 19-yearold with a troubled past, used a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle to kill 17 people at a Florida school on Wednesday.

It’s the same class of assault weapon used to kill 26 at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

To kill 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Fourteen people at a conference center in San Bernardino. Twelve in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.

It’s the same sort of weapon that Stephen Paddock modified to function like a fully automatic rifle when he fired from a 32nd-story Las Vegas hotel room, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds more attending a concert across the street.

How many more people, howmany more children, must die before members of Congress and President Trump acknowledge that assault weapons have no place on the streets of our country?

Will this nation ever unlock itself from the grip of the NRA, which has turned the Republican Party and the president into political pawns?

Trump went on national television Thursday morning to offer condolences and prayers to Parkland, Fla., victims.

“No child, no teacher, should ever be in danger in an American school,” he said. “Today we mourn for all of those who lost their lives.” And, to the nation’s children, he said, “I want you to know you are never alone and never will be.” Such pablum. He cited scripture. He said he plans to visit Parkland and continue coordinating the federal response. He said he was committed to securing the na- tion’s schools and to “tackle the difficult issue of mental health.”

Yes, we should keep people with mental illness away from guns. But that misses the point. Research shows that 96 percent of violent acts in the United States are committed by people with no mental illness. Mentally ill people are much more likely to be victims of violence than culprits.

Just like after the Las Vegas massacre, Trump was reading from NRA talking points, completely ignoring the elephant in the room. There wasn’t a word about assault weapons.

It’s time to put teeth in the nation’s gun laws, starting with reinstatement of the Assault Weapons Ban that was on the books for just 10 years before Congress let it lapse.

The ban was championed by U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco, following a 1993 massacre at 101 California St. in San Francisco, in which a gunman killed eight people and wounded six before taking his own life.

That incident showed the nation the dangers of rapidfire weaponry. Even Trump back in 2000 declared support for the Assault Weapons Ban. And in 2012 he backed President Obama’s call for action in the wake of Sandy Hook.

But that was before Trump declared himself a lover of the NRA and bowed to its dogma. That was before he became president. That was before the mass shootings were on his watch.

Today, he offers no solutions. He’s part of the problem.