Trump likely to console victims but not offer gun law changes
President Trump will land in Las Vegas on Wednesday to console a city — and a nation — still reeling from the deadliest shooting spree in modern U.S. history.
Caught between the latest gruesome images highlighting the nation’s epidemic of gun deaths and a GOP-led U.S. Congress that has been moving to roll back restrictions on firearms, Trump is likely to offer sympathy to the victims — but not propose any changes to gun laws.
In the wake of the attack on a country music concert that claimed 58 lives and injured more than 500 people, Trump has carefully avoided any discussion of how U.S. policy might be changed to address a gun violence problem that is by far the worst in the developed world. The U.S. has more than five times the per capita rate of gun homicides as Canada and more than 10 times that of the Netherlands and France.
“Look, we have a tragedy,” Trump said Tuesday. “What happened is, in many ways, a miracle. The police department, they’ve done such an incredible job. And we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes on.”
According to a White House statement about the trip, Trump is going “to offer his support to those recovering from their wounds, and to thank the courageous first responders.”
What’s unclear is whether Trump, who has a penchant for unscripted remarks, will repeat comments he’s made after other gun massacres. Trump has previously said that more guns would have helped stave off further violence. He called for people to carry more guns after shootings in Orlando in 2016 and several times in 2015 after tragedies in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.
FBI statistics show a recent uptick in gun violence as the mass shootings appear to be increasingly deadly. The death toll after a 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn., was 26. In an Orlando night club in 2016, there were 49 people killed.
Polls show broad public support for extending criminal background checks to all gun purchases, including Internet sales. According to a June 2016 Quinnipiac University poll, 93% support this change. Another 6 in 10 support renewing the expired ban on assault weapons, the survey found.
From a political perspective, however, there appears to be little appetite for changing these laws. Trump has declared himself a strong Second Amendment supporter and has already reversed an Obama-era ban on gun ownership by people ruled mentally “defective” by the Social Security system.
The National Rifle Association, with a number of gun industry representatives serving on its board of directors, was among Trump’s earliest corporate backers. “You came through big for me, and I am going to come through for you,” he said at the NRA’s April convention in Atlanta.
Trump has significantly changed his position on access to guns over time. In a 2000 book, he said Republicans “refuse even limited restrictions,” saying they “walk the NRA line.” He expressed support for the assault weapons ban and longer waiting periods to purchase guns.
More than a decade later, Trump began to argue that gun background checks “accomplished very little” and declared himself “a very big Second Amendment person.” In a 2015 interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump said mass shootings are a fact of life.