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Title: Trump Stuns Lawmakers With Seeming Embrace of Gun Control Measures
Source:
MSN
URL Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli ... 1QI?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp
Published: Feb 28, 2018
Author: staff
Post Date: 2018-02-28 20:44:27 by buckeroo
Keywords: None
Views: 2759
Comments: 29
In a remarkable meeting in the Roosevelt Room, the president veered wildly from the N.R.A. playbook in front of giddy Democrats and stone-faced Republicans. He called for comprehensive gun control legislation that would expand background checks to weapons purchased at gun shows and on the internet, keep guns from the mentally ill, secure schools and restrict gun sales from some young adults. He even suggested a conversation on an assault weapons ban. At one point, Mr. Trump suggested that law enforcement authorities should have the power to seize guns from mentally ill or other dangerous people without first going to court. “I like taking the guns early,” he said, adding, “take the guns first, go through due process second.” The president’s declarations prompted a frantic series of calls from N.R.A. lobbyists to their allies on Capitol Hill and a statement from the group calling the ideas Mr. Trump expressed “bad policy.” Republican lawmakers issued statements or told reporters they remain opposed to gun control measures. “We’re not ditching any Constitutional protections simply because the last person the President talked to today doesn’t like them,” snapped Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska. Sign Up For the Morning Briefing Newsletter Democrats, too, said they were skeptical that Mr. Trump will follow through. “The White House can now launch a lobbying campaign to get universal background checks passed, as the president promised in this meeting, or they can sit and do nothing,” said Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. At the core of Mr. Trump’s suggestion was the revival of a bipartisan bill drafted in 2013 by Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat, and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Despite a concerted push by President Barack Obama and the personal appeals of Sandy Hook parents, the bill fell to a largely Republican filibuster. The president’s embrace did not immediately yield converts. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said that he was unmoved after the meeting, repeating the Republican dogma that recent shootings were not “conducted by someone who bought a gun at a gun show or parking lot.” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Republican who sat next to Mr. Trump looking alternately bemused and flustered, emerged from the meeting and declared, “I thought it was fascinating television and it was surreal to actually be there.” But Mr. Trump suggested that the dynamics in Washington have changed following the Florida school shooting that claimed 17 lives, in part because of his own leadership in the White House, a sentiment that the Democrats in the room readily appeared to embrace as they saw the president supporting their ideas. “It would be so beautiful to have one bill that everyone could support,” Mr. Trump said as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and a longtime gun-control advocate, sat smiling to his left. “It’s time that a president stepped up.” Democrats tried to turn sometimes muddled presidential musings into firm policy: “You saw the president clearly saying not once, not twice, not three times, but like ten times, that he wanted to see a strong universal background check bill,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said. “He didn’t mince words about it. So I do not understand how then he could back away from that.” Just what the performance means, and whether Mr. Trump will aggressively push for new gun restrictions, remain uncertain given Mr. Trump’s history of taking erratic positions on policy issues, especially ones that have long polarized Washington and the country. The gun-control performance on Wednesday was reminiscent of a similar, televised discussion with lawmakers about immigration last year at which he appeared to back bipartisan legislation to help young immigrants brought to the country illegally as children — only to reverse himself and back a hard-line approach that helped scuttle consensus in the Senate. Mr. Trump’s comments during the hourlong meeting were at odds with his history as a candidate and president who has repeatedly declared his love for the Second Amendment and the N.R.A., which gave his campaign $30 million. At the group’s annual conference last year, Mr. Trump declared: “To the N.R.A., I can proudly say I will never, ever let you down.” But at the meeting, the president repeatedly rejected the N.R.A.’s top legislative priority, a bill known as “concealed carry reciprocity,” that would allow a person with permission to carry a concealed weapon in one state to automatically do so in every state. To the dismay of Republicans, he dismissed the measure as having no chance at passage in the Congress. Republican leaders in the House had paired that N.R.A. priority with a modest measure to improve data reporting to the existing instant background check system. “You’ll never get it,” Mr. Trump told Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House Republican whip who was gravely injured in a mass shooting last year but still opposes gun restrictions. “You’ll never get it passed. We want to get something done.” Mr. Trump also flatly insisted that legislation should raise the minimum age for purchasing rifles from 18 to 21 — an idea the N.R.A. and many Republicans fiercely oppose. When Mr. Toomey pushed back on an increase in the minimum age for rifles, the president accused him of fearing the N.R.A. — a remarkable slap since the N.R.A. withdrew its support for Mr. Toomey over his background check bill. “If there’s a Republican who’s demonstrated he’s not afraid of the N.R.A., that would be me,” Mr. Toomey said after the meeting. The president appeared eager to challenge the impression that he is bought and paid-for by the gun rights group. While calling the N.R.A. membership “well-meaning,” he also said he told the group’s leaders at a lunch on Sunday that “it’s time. We’re going to stop this nonsense. It’s time.” Officials at the gun group were taken aback by the president’s comments and immediately ramped up their lobbying against measures they have long said would damage the Second Amendment and do little to protect people against gun violence. “While today’s meeting made for great T.V., the gun control policies discussed would make bad policy that wouldn’t keep our children safer,” said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for the N.R.A.’s lobbying arm. “We are going to continue to work to pass policies that might actually prevent another horrific tragedy.” But at least for Wednesday, Mr. Trump seemed willing to veer far from the N.R.A. script, even seeming to suggest that he might back an ban on assault-style weapons when Ms. Feinstein asked what they could do about “weapons of war.” The N.R.A. has helped to defeat an assault weapons ban since the last one expired in 2004. The reaction in Washington was swift. Breitbart.com, a right-wing site once led by Stephen K. Bannon, the president’s one-time chief strategist, published a story with an all-caps, bright red headline: “TRUMP THE GUN GRABBER.” The site added that the president “CEDES DEMS’ WISH LIST — BUMP STOCKS, BUYING AGE, ‘ASSAULT WEAPONS,’ BACKGROUND CHECKS. TELLS SCALISE TO TAKE A HIKE — AFTER SURVIVING ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT.” The president did return several times to a proposal that conservatives like: arming teachers in schools so and ending the “gun free zones” around schools that Mr. Trump said had made America’s schools among the most vulnerable targets for mass shooters. “You’ve got to have defense too,” the president told the lawmakers. “You can’t just be sitting ducks. And that’s exactly what we’ve allowed people in these buildings and schools to be.” But several times, he acknowledged how controversial that proposal is, and seemed to accept the idea that it might not be included in a comprehensive gun control measure that could pass through both chambers in the Congress. He also backed a modest measure sponsored by a Republican and a Democrat in the Senate to improve the quality of the data in the background check system. But he told the bill’s author, Sen. John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, to consider just adding that proposal to the broader expansion of the background check system. “It would be nice to add everything on to it,” Mr. Trump said. “Maybe change the title. Maybe we could make it much more comprehensive and have one bill.”WASHINGTON — President Trump stunned Republicans on live television Wednesday by embracing gun control and urging a group of lawmakers at the White House to resurrect gun safety legislation that has been opposed for years by the powerful National Rifle Association and the vast majority of his party.
Eliminate some or all semi-automatic firearms from the citizenry?
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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 19.
#1. To: buckeroo, *Bang List* (#0)
(Edited)
Mr. Trump suggested that law enforcement authorities should have the power to seize guns You have to pass it, to see if your guns get confiscated.
"Take the guns first, go through due process second." This comes from a president who only a few weeks ago wondered aloud on Twitter, "Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?": Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018 Is this truly a Nixon-Goes-To-China moment, in which the Republican Trump, who also said today that he "loves the Second Amendment," will restrict gun ownership more than any president since Bill Clinton signed the assault-weapons ban into law in 1994? That remains to be seen, as Trump has double-reversed course in the past, such as when he agreed to legalize "Dreamers" in a deal with Democratic lawmakers before changing his mind. In the meantime, Trump's criticism of the NRA and embrace of gun control is leaving progressives as bewildered as it is making conservatives angry as hell: https://reason.com/blog/2018/02/28/trump-take-the-guns-first-go-through-due
#20. To: Deckard (#19)
Deckard: This comes from a president who only a few weeks ago wondered aloud on Twitter, "Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process?" There is nothing new here. George Washington set the precedent when his first action of 1776 was a campaign to confiscate the private arms from all citizens in Queens County, New York. The impoundments occurred without trial, though the Army did provide receipt. Guns were confiscated from individuals without due process. Furthermore. don’t act acrimoniously and be shocked when you learn that: Five states allow guns to be seized before someone can commit violence In the wake of massacres similar to Wednesday’s school shooting in Parkland, Fla., a small number of states have passed “red flag laws” that allow the seizure of guns before people can commit acts of violence. California, Washington, Oregon, Indiana and Connecticut have statutes that can be used to temporarily take guns away from people a judge deems a threat to themselves or others. Lawmakers in 18 other states — including Florida — plus the District of Columbia have proposed similar measures. At the federal level, Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation last May that would encourage states to adopt the approach. Mental illness, escalating threats, substance abuse and domestic violence are among the circumstances in which a judge can order weapon restrictions under the statutes. “This morning I heard the sheriff [in Parkland] lament the fact that he did not have the tools to remove the firearms from the shooter,” Joshua Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said Thursday. “Had he lived in one of those states where this law is in place, he would have had the tools, and this shooting may have been averted.” The nation’s patchwork of federal and state gun laws mainly involves background checks and actions to prevent people who pose a threat from buying firearms. The approach of the red flag laws is to seize guns from people who have them and to restrict their access until they are no longer deemed dangerous. “We think of this as a new frontier,” said Jonas Oransky, deputy legal director of Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded in 2014. “We don’t have a perfect system in this country, and we can’t stop every act of gun violence. This is a way for states to take some care and be somewhat nimble when there is a dangerous case.” The laws allow family members or law enforcement officers to ask a judge for a “gun violence restraining order” or an “extreme risk protection order” against someone who behaves the way 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, the alleged Florida gunman, did in recent years. According to news reports, Cruz killed squirrels with a pellet gun, trained his dogs to attack a neighbor’s piglets, posted on Instagram about guns and killing animals and eventually threatened at least one teen. He showed signs of depression and had been treated at a mental health clinic. Authorities say Cruz used an AR-15 assault-style rifle to kill 17 people and wound at least 15 others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Wednesday. Cruz has been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder. In an Everytown study of mass shootings from 2009 to 2016, 42 percent of the attackers had shown warning signs of violent behavior. In most situations, however, the danger is suicide, not homicide. When Duke University researchers looked at the application of Connecticut’s red flag law between 1999 and 2013, they found that police served 762 so-called “risk warrants” during that period and estimated that a gun suicide was prevented for every 10 to 20 seizures. The police found guns in 99 percent of the cases in which they served the warrants, seizing an average of seven firearms from each person. Twenty-one people went on to commit suicide anyway, six by firearms. Overall, suicides account for about 60 percent of gun deaths in the United States. The National Alliance on Mental Illness has no formal position on red flag laws, according to Ron Honberg, a senior policy adviser for the organization, but hopes to see more states adopt them. “It creates some mechanism to intervene at a particular point in time when a person may be in bad shape,” Honberg said. “Is it going to be 100 percent effective? No.” In the three Western states with such laws, all adopted since 2014, a family member or law enforcement officer must petition a court about someone who appears to be a threat. Relatives often go to the police and ask them to do so, experts said. A judge can quickly order the weapons surrendered if convinced of the threat. Within a few weeks, a full hearing is held on longer-term restrictions, which can last a year. Judges must allow people who want their weapons back to revisit the ruling. In Connecticut, only law enforcement agents can ask for a risk warrant. And in Indiana, law enforcement can confiscate weapons without a judge’s order. The gun owner must ask the court to get the weapons returned. States have long prohibited some convicted felons and people committed involuntarily from having firearms. At least seven states last year passed laws restricting access to guns for people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence crimes, and three require that offenders turn their guns in. Horwitz and Oransky said the National Rifle Association and other members of the gun lobby have not put up much opposition to the statutes. “We would be happy if they came to the table and were supportive of those laws,” Oransky said.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest expand background checks to weapons purchased at gun shows and on the internet
#19. To: hondo68 (#1)
(Edited)
Replies to Comment # 19. Peoples lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true and some are false. Some are old and some are new. There is no recovery for someone falsely accused - life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as Due Process? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 10, 2018
#21. To: Deckard (#19)
Donald Trump: Take the guns first, go through due process second.
You can stop lathering up with such extreme cod indignation as though you were on stage acting in a Victorian melodrama or burlesque.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 19.
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