USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: On guns, all talk, no action and more deaths
More than 100 days have passed since mass shootings at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and a nightlife area in Dayton, Ohio, left 31 dead over a span of hours on a weekend. Amid the shock and horror that followed, President Donald Trump started out saying all the right things.
He promised meaningful proposals like extending background checks and promoting “red flag” laws that allow judges to temporarily take guns from people deemed a danger to themselves or others. “Politically,” he said, “good, bad, or indifferent. I don’t care.”
Spoiler alert: He does care about the politics.
After pushback from gun rights backers, Trump put the issue on ice. Meanwhile, the killings continue. Five students were shot, two of them killed, at a high school in Santa Clarita, California, last Thursday. Ten people were shot, four of them fatally, at a footballviewing party in Fresno on Sunday. And three were shot and killed Monday at a Walmart in Duncan, Oklahoma.
For a while after Dayton and El Paso, it looked like this time might be different. At the urging of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, the White House began assembling the promised proposals and opened negotiations on Capitol Hill for new legislation.
Expanding background checks was overwhelmingly popular. As if to tragically underscore the need for reform, a gunman who failed a background check at a firearm store bypassed the system by buying an AR- style rifle through a private sale. He opened fire with the weapon on Aug. 31 while driving through West Texas, killing seven before being shot to death by police.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R- Ky., had refused to hold a vote on a House bill providing universal background checks passed in February. But a weaker, bipartisan alternative in the Senate would extend background checks to all commercial sales, including those on the internet and at gun shows. “If the president took a position on a bill ... I’d be happy to put it on the floor,” McConnell said.
Then came the inevitable pushback from the National Rifle Association, which had pumped $ 30 million into Trump’s 2016 election campaign. NRA chief Wayne LaPierre lobbied Trump six times against proposing new gun control measures, according to The Washington Post.
By late September, Trump had gone silent on the issue, and The Post reported that the president was abandoning plans to fight gun violence because he was worried it might cost him votes within his base.
Trump isn’t the first politician to sacrifice principle for the sake of holding onto power, though the chasm between what he says he cares about and what he ends up doing ( on issues ranging from guns to vaping to Ukraine corruption) grows more vast with each passing week.
Federal action wouldn’t prevent all mass shootings, but it would stop some of them. To not even try is disgraceful.