Trump calls for action on school safety, guns
President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Congress should act quickly on gun laws as he convened lawmakers at the White House and pushed for tougher background checks, better school safety and more mental health resources to prevent shootings.
“We can’t wait and play games and nothing gets done,” Trump said as he opened the session with 17 House and Senate lawmakers. “We want to stop the problems.”
Trump particularly cited the need for stronger background checks, which have been resisted by Republicans in Congress and the National Rifle Association. But the president said he told NRA officials over lunch recently that changes in gun culture are needed.
The president said Congress shouldn’t be afraid of the NRA.
“Perhaps the most important thing the president did today is he looked members of the House and the Senate in the eye and told them that they’re afraid of the NRA and they shouldn’t be. And he’s right. As I told the president, it doesn’t matter what the NRA thinks, what matters is doing something that can help save lives,” said U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, who participated in the White House meeting.
Deutch represents Parkland, which is where 17 people were killed and 16 were injured in the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. At the end of the meeting, Deutch took the rubber bracelet he’s been wearing to honor the Stoneman Douglas victims and gave it to the president, telling Trump he wanted him to have it in hopes there will never again President Donald Trump
need to be a similar bracelet.
“I am heartened about what you say about the need for presidential leadership. You can do this,” Deutch told the president.
The congressman, a Democrat who is often strongly critical of Trump, said after the meeting he is hopeful the president’s comments will spur the congressional action. He applauded the president’s call for legislation that that does not include a provision to expand the ability of people to carry concealed weapons the way some Republicans want, and does include universal background checks for gun buyers. And he agrees with the president that the ban on federal gun violence research should be lifted.
He told the president that the idea of arming teachers — something Trump has repeatedly advocated since the Stoneman Douglas massacre — is a bad idea.
Deutch was less optimistic that what Trump said Wednesday will be his position going forward. “Obviously the president has a history of saying one thing one day and something else the next. But in this case, he repeatedly pointed out that no president since the Columbine shooting has been able to pass a meaningful gun safety bill. And everyone knows that it’s important for the president to claim that he can do things that others can’t. And if that helps him to continue to focus on this and to push my colleagues who are too often worried more about the NRA than about any other issues, then I’ll be thrilled,” Deutch said.
Four other Democratic and Republican lawmakers from Florida attended — U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and U.S. Reps. Brian Mast, Stephanie Murphy and John Rutherford — but the White House didn’t invite U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.
Deutch said politics is the only explanation. Trump has encouraged Gov. Rick Scott to challenge Nelson in the November election. “The only conclusion is that this was a political decision because of the president’s relationship with Gov. Scott. I don’t think politics should have played any role, but as long as we’re talking about politics, our senior senator [Nelson] thinks we ought to get weapons of war off the street and our governor has an A-plus rating from the NRA.”
Momentum on gun legislation has stalled in Congress as Republican leaders showed little interest in pursuing stricter gun control laws and Democrats pushed new restrictions following the Parkland shooting.
Sen. Chris Murphy, DConn., told the president that if he backed legislation in Congress to expand background checks, as proposed under a bill twice rejected in the Senate, it would pass. “It is going to have to be you,” Murphy said.
Republican leaders, who have majority control of the House and Senate, are reluctant to lead on legislation without knowing they have Trump’s full support and can rely on his popularity with a core flank of the GOP electorate to shield them from political blowback.
Information from the Associated Press supplemented this report.