President Donald Trump seemed willing to consider pushing background check legislation in the wake of two mass shootings earlier this month in El Paso and Dayton, but it didn’t take long for him to wilt under pressure from the NRA and Wayne LaPierre.
House Democrats passed two background check bills earlier this year as one of their top priorities to prevent mass shootings. But the legislation has been blocked from receiving a vote by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), even as the death toll from gun violence continues to rise along with white nationalist terrorism.
Trump had signaled his readiness to support such legislation. After all, 22 people were killed in El Paso and 10 were killed in Dayton. And Trump likely would have been able to pressure the Senate to pass the bills. It’s not like the bills actually ban guns. The bills simply require stronger background checks, which means only people who can have guns would be legally able to get them. This is something that even gun owners and NRA members support along with an overwhelming majority of Americans.
“Days after a pair of deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio, President Trump said he was prepared to endorse what he described as ‘very meaningful background checks’ that would be possible because of his ‘greater influence now over the Senate and over the House,’” the New York Times reports.
During his vacation in New Jersey, however, Trump changed his mind after LaPierre, who is currently embroiled in a hypocritical scandal, warned Trump not to take any meaningful action to curb gun violence.
“But after discussions with gun rights advocates during his two-week working vacation in Bedminster, N.J. — including talks with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association — Mr. Trump’s resolve appears to have substantially softened, and he has reverted to reiterating the conservative positions on the gun issue he has espoused since the 2016 campaign,” NYT continued. “He also echoed the standard response to mass shootings delivered by the N.R.A., which since 1966 has pushed the government to focus on the mental problems of the gunmen rather than how they were able to obtain their guns.”
“Mr. Trump’s turnaround is the latest example of the president ultimately capitulating to the views of his populist white and working-class political base, and it came after N.R.A. officials flooded the White House, Congress and governors’ offices around the country with phone calls since the back-to-back mass shootings on Aug. 3 and 4,” NYT concluded.
Clearly, Trump is owned by the NRA, which spent $30 million to help get him elected in 2016.
America is never going to see the end of mass shootings as long as Republicans spout “thoughts and prayers” and blame anything and everything except guns and weak gun laws.
The NRA has too much influence over our government. Americans are dying, yet our lawmakers willingly turn a blind eye because they are beholden to or scared of an organization that has the blood of innocent children on their hands. And every lawmaker, and even the president, who cowers before the NRA has the same blood on their hands as well.
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