{"id":229078,"date":"2019-09-01T22:01:19","date_gmt":"2019-09-02T02:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=229078"},"modified":"2019-09-01T22:01:19","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T02:01:19","slug":"trump-says-hell-work-with-congress-to-stop-mass-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2019\/09\/01\/trump-says-hell-work-with-congress-to-stop-mass-shootings\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump says he’ll work with Congress to stop mass shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The president said it would be \u201cwonderful to say\u201d he’d work to \u201celiminate\u201d mass shootings, but acknowledged that that was unlikely. (File Photo<\/a>: The White House\/Facebook<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump expressed a commitment Sunday, hours after the latest deadly mass shooting, to work with a divided Congress to \u201cstop the menace of mass attacks.\u201d He said any measures must satisfy the competing goals of protecting public safety and the constitutional right to gun ownership and seemed to cast fresh doubt on the merits of instituting more thorough background checks for gun purchases.<\/p>\n

Trump spoke shortly after the death toll in Saturday’s rampage in West Texas rose to seven as authorities worked to understand why a man pulled over for a traffic infraction opened fire on state troopers and fled. He shot more than 20 people before he was killed by police. A motive has not been released.<\/p>\n

The president said it would be \u201cwonderful to say\u201d he’d work to \u201celiminate\u201d mass shootings, but acknowledged that that was unlikely.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want to substantially reduce the violent crime,\u201d Trump said at the top of a briefing about Hurricane Dorian at Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Washington.<\/p>\n

Trump’s commitment to gun control has been in doubt ever since 17 students and adults were killed in a shooting at a Parkland, Florida, high school on Valentine’s Day in 2018. Trump came out in favour of stronger background checks after the shooting, but then quickly retreated under pressure from the National Rifle Association, the politically powerfully gun owners’ lobby that strongly backed his bid to become president.<\/p>\n

More recently, he has waffled on the merits of stronger background checks for gun purchases in the aftermath of back-to-back shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, that killed more than 30 people about a month ago. Instead, Trump sought to elevate mental health issues over access to guns.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five (shootings) going back even five or six or seven years, for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it’s a big problem. It’s a mental problem. It’s a big problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump mentioned the need for \u201cstrong measures to keep weapons out of the hands of dangerous and deranged individuals\u201d along with changes to a mental health system he described as \u201cbroken.\u201d He also called for ensuring that criminals with guns \u201care put behind bars and kept off the streets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPublic safety is our No. 1 priority, always wanting to protect our Second Amendment. So important,\u201d he said, referring to the constitutional amendment that established the right to keep and bear arms.<\/p>\n

Trump told reporters earlier Sunday that he’s been speaking to lawmakers from both political parties and \u201cpeople want to do something.\u201d He said the administration is \u201clooking at a lot of different things\u201d and hopes to have a package ready by the time Congress returns to session next week.<\/p>\n

The Republican-controlled Senate has refused to take up several gun-control bills that passed the Democratic-controlled House this year, and the GOP historically has opposed many efforts to strengthen the nation’s gun laws.<\/p>\n

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the Republican-controlled Senate to \u201cend its obstruction\u201d and send the gun violence measures to Trump.<\/p>\n

Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania said he has discussed the issue with Trump and described the president as \u201cvery interested in doing something meaningful.\u201d Toomey has long pushed a bipartisan bill with Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia to expand background checks and said he remains interested in measures to keep guns away from people who shouldn’t have them.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re going to take a very serious run at it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Others, like Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, argued that Congress should use his state as a model.<\/p>\n

Scott, who was governor at the time of the Parkland school shooting, said officials sat down within days of the massacre with law enforcement, mental health counsellors and educators. Legislation was quickly passed and signed into law, including a \u201cred-flag\u201d statute that would allow authorities to confiscate weapons from individuals deemed by the courts to be a threat to themselves or others.<\/p>\n

Scott said he doesn’t want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens, but added that \u201cwe’ve got to figure out how we get guns away from mentally ill people who want to harm others or themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the days immediately after the August shootings in Texas and Ohio, Trump said he was eager to implement \u201cvery meaningful background checks,\u201d saying there was \u201ctremendous support\u201d for it. He also said he disagreed with the NRA’s stance that such legislation would open the door to infringing on Second Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

But the president has also acknowledged that his core supporters support gun rights, which highlights the challenge he has to balance the politics of gun control before he stands for reelection in November 2020.<\/p>\n

Toomey was interviewed on ABC’s \u201cThis Week,\u201d and Scott spoke on NBC’s \u201cMeet the Press.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 President Donald Trump expressed a commitment Sunday, hours after the latest deadly mass shooting, to work with a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":228172,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-229078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-w","mauthors-darlene-superville","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229078"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229078\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":229080,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229078\/revisions\/229080"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}