The pseudonym "Philo Vaihinger" has been abandoned. All posts have been and are written by me, Joseph Auclair.

Thursday, March 1, 2018

The Duce goes off the reservation on guns

He rejects concealed carry reciprocity, calls for universal background checks, much tighter mental health restrictions, raising the age to buy guns to 21, and banning bump stocks and the like.

The bump stock issue apart, the NRA opposes all of this and denounced Trump's ideas.

Trump Stuns Lawmakers With Seeming Embrace of Comprehensive Gun Control

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.

In a remarkable meeting, 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 mentally ill people, secure schools and restrict gun sales for 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 people or others who could present a danger without first going to court. 

“I like taking the guns early,” he said, adding, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Ah, there's the heart of Bozo.

Due process? Just a fussy detail that we shouldn't let get in the way.

The 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 that Mr. Trump expressed “bad policy.” 

Republican lawmakers suggested to reporters that they remained 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,” Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, said in a statement.

. . . .

But at the meeting, the president repeatedly rejected the N.R.A.’s top legislative priority, a bill known as concealed-carry reciprocity, which 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 buying rifles to 21 from 18 — an idea the N.R.A. and many Republicans fiercely oppose. 

. . . .

The president did return several times to a proposal that conservatives like: arming teachers in schools and ending the so-called gun-free zones around schools that Mr. Trump said had made those institutions 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 was, and seemed to accept the idea that it might not be included in a comprehensive gun control measure that could pass both chambers of 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, Mr. Cornyn, 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.”

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