Don’s Moment
Prez has never been a pro-gun hard-liner
LEADING Democrats responded to the weekend’s shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, by absurdly laying the blame on President Trump.
But as furious as he might be about the exploitation of these horrible crimes for liberal partisan advantage, Trump should rise above his enemies’ squalor, resist the impulse to counterattack and advance common-sense gun reforms that are popular with a national majority.
If only momentarily, Trump did offer a glimpse of what he was prepared to do about the plague of mass shootings afflicting the nation. Yes, his tweeted offer of a grand bargain, trading background checks for immigration reform, was likely a nonstarter. Horse-trading over an issue like immigration while Americans still reeled from the two horrific massacres wasn’t a good look.
Trump dropped the bargain offer when he gave a 10-minute speech about the shootings later Monday that condemned the “evil contagion” of hate. But while he didn’t endorse any specific gun legislation in his speech, the earlier tweet did remind us of something that the president’s fans and detractors forget: Trump is no hard-line opponent of gun legislation.
In the past, he has shown himself amenable to deviating from the National Rifle Association’s intractable stance — opposition to just about any restriction imaginable on gun sales. Most GOP lawmakers march in lockstep to the NRA drumbeat, but not so Trump, whose political mentality was shaped in New York City — not, say, the Mountain West.
In February 2018, in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., highschool shooting, Trump convened a White House summit during which he shocked some on the right by saying that he favored more extensive background checks and increasing the power of the police to prevent mentally disturbed people from possessing weapons.
What’s more, he accused his fellow Republicans of being so “petrified” of the NRA that they
were afraid to do anything that might offend the gun-rights lobby. Unfortunately, Democrats were then, as they are now, too entrenched in their hate for him to try to take advantage of this opening.
Whatever his other failings, Trump showed then, as he has on other occasions, that he understands when the situation calls for some flexibility.
And more ideological flexibility is exactly what he ought again to be showing.
House Democrats passed two bills this year that dealt with guns. One extended background checks to include gun purchases made at gun shows and on the Internet. The other extended the waiting time for those flagged by the national check system to 10 days, from the current three, giving the FBI more time to research gun buyers. Though neither undermined the Second Amendment, both were dead on arrival in the GOP-majority Senate after a Trump veto threat.
Trump should publicly tell Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he wants the bills enacted, while also stating his support for some form of red-flag legislation, aimed at keeping guns away from the mentally ill.
He might even consider some modest restrictions on ammunition clips that make it all too easy for monstrous killers to mow down innocents.
Neither of the House bills, like all proposed gun reforms, could ensure that mass shootings would cease altogether. But neither would they do the nation or gun rights any real harm. Any inconvenience to law-abiding gun owners would be offset by the benefit to the country of the demonstration of unity of purpose by both parties in the face of national tragedy.
Right now, Democrats seem determined to frame Trump as an accessory to murder and, by extension, applying the same charge to those who support him — thus repeating Hillary Clinton’s error in labeling half the country as “deplorables.” If they are interested in compromise, their rhetoric doesn’t show it. That kind of language only adds to the deep polarization and coarsening of public discourse they claim incites the racist murders.
But Trump should resist the temptation to return the bile that is flung at him. He should show the country that he understands how this is a moment to reach across the aisle. It will make for good policy — and smart 2020 politics.