President should take lead on U.S. gun policy

Since the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Donald Trump has taken some positive steps.

He posted a tweet urging Democrats and Republicans to work together on stronger background checks for gun purchases the Monday after the two weekend shootings.

Later the same day, he spoke against the racism behind the El Paso assault.

“In one voice our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” he said at the White House. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated.”

Some noted that he did not then repeat his call earlier that day for gun control.

But he has since, calling for action on background checks Friday, and speaking with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell about it.

McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, essentially promised debate on background checks and “red flag” legislation that would allow the seizure of guns from someone deemed dangerous by a judge.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York have urged McConnell to call the Senate into session so the public pressure caused by the recent shootings will not fade before Congress acts.

McConnell declined to do so, saying: “If we did that, we would just have people scoring points and nothing would happen. There has to be a bipartisan discussion here of what we can agree on.

“If we do it prematurely it will just be another frustrating experience.”

McConnell is probably right about the politics of the situation. A quick vote on Housepassed legislation to expand background checks to all gun purchases — including at private gun shows — would likely have done little more than prompt a filibuster and create a campaign issue for 2020.

Action on the issue depends on several things, the most important of which is leadership from Trump.

The president needs to pressure Senate Republicans against filibustering universal background checks.

And American voters — 90% of whom support closing the background check loophole — should be letting their senators know they want the legislation passed. To his credit, Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Lehigh County Republican, is cosponsor of such legislation.

Red flag legislation — which would allow a family member to report worries that a gun owner has made threats of violence and allow a judge to decide whether there’s cause to strip the individual of his firearms — also should get a vote.

Trump should put pressure on McConnell on this, too, and lean on Republicans to not filibuster a bill with adequate due process protections.

The president should do one more good and popular thing before Congress adjourns in December: support a ban on the sale of assault-style firearms. The Trump administration took a step in this direction after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting massacre by banning bump stocks. These attachments — which make a semiautomatic rifle a rapidfire firearm with one pull of the trigger — share something in common with assaultstyle guns. Both are essentially weapons of war and therefore do not belong in civilian hands.

The Second Amendment protects a citizen’s right to bear arms, for both hunting and self defense. But its protections should not extend to weapons of mass carnage such as those seen in too many instances — from the slaughter of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 to the 22 victims in El Paso and the nine killed in 32 seconds in Dayton this month.

“Background checks and red flags would probably lead the discussion,” McConnell said in the recent radio interview, “but a lot of other things will come up as well. What we can’t do is fail to pass something.”

Trump should use his bully pulpit and his influence with Republicans to get more than something passed. He should lead his party to a more reasonable and popular position on guns.

If he were to achieve meaningful gun control — including a ban on assault-style weapons, universal background checks and the disarming of dangerous people with a red flag law

— the president would make the nation safer. And he would likely earn himself a place in history in the process.

By taking a stand for reasonable checks on gun ownership, Trump could make guns a less partisan issue, doing his party and the nation a great service in the process. He could prove that public safety and the constitutional right to bear arms can coexist.