‘GRIEF ISN’T ENOUGH’ AS POLS FIGHT NRA
from his room in the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel and casino. Trump said only that Paddock had “brutally murdered” the victims. He did not describe it as an act of domestic terrorism.
Trump’s refusal to talk about terrorism drew immediate criticism.
“The lone wolf. The local shooter. The gunman. Any and everything, but terrorist. Wonder why,” filmmaker and activist Ava DuVernay tweeted.
Trump also made no statement about the trend of mass shootings in America. In his inaugural address, he had decried “the crime and the gangs and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential.”
“This American carnage stops right here and stops right now,” he said then.
On Monday, Trump thanked first responders who rushed to the scene and found Paddock dead inside his 32nd-floor room.
He also repeatedly invoked Scripture to comfort to victims.
“We ask God to help see you through this very dark period,” he said.
“Scripture teaches us the Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. We seek comfort in those words, for we know that God lives in the hearts of those who grieve. To the wounded who are now recovering in hospitals, we are praying for your full and speedy recovery, and pledge to you our support from this day forward.”
Trump said he will travel to Las Vegas on Wednesday, one day after he visits Puerto Rico to survey the deadly wreckage from Hurricane Maria.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later insisted it was too soon to discuss how the bloodbath might affect gun-control policy. The President and First Lady led a moment of silence in honor of the victims in the afternoon and ordered flags to be flown at half-staff for the rest of the week.
Trump took in more than $30 million in NRA campaign contributions and has vowed to prevent any restrictions on the Second Amendment which protects the right of people to bear arms.
jsilverstein@nydailynews.com Paddock. If it turns out that he was a member or adherent of a white supremacist group or anti-government militia, describing him as a terrorist would serve to draw attention to the growing menace posed by these groups. When violence is understood as part of a broader pattern, more attention and resources are devoted to combating it. But there is also a danger that in reaching for parity in how we treat Muslim and non-Muslim perpetrators of violence, we simply re-create the overreach that marks our response to Muslim terrorism. Violence motivated by political or religious ideologies is thankfully very rare in the United States. It typically accounts for a few dozen or less of the roughly 15,000 homicides in the U.S. each year. Our response should be proportionate to the threat so as not to contribute to the fear terrorism creates. On the other hand, on average, 93 Americans are killed with guns every single day. Paddock, like other perpetrators of mass shootings, had managed to stockpile a large quantity of guns and ammunition. Perhaps the pattern to which Las Vegas belongs is of an epidemic of gun violence that Congress refuses to address with sensible regulation. Patel is co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.