It's Deja Vu All Over Again on Gun Control

Deja Vu on Gun Control
When President Trump held his major meeting with both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, he basically agreed with the position each lawmaker gave, even saying it was worthwhile to consider amnesty when senators Grassley and Graham said that they were willing to vote for a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. The capstone came when Trump announced that he would sign any bill on immigration that Congress sent him. He said that he would take the heat that might come with the action, meaning that he would even absorb the anger that would come from his supporters, who were dead-set against amnesty. He said that the reason he could accept anything that came to him was because he respected the lawmakers. When, however, he was presented with a series of legislative proposals, one even giving him $25 billion for his border wall over ten years, he rejected any bill that didn't include the four pillars that he had set as his immigration structure.  My own assessment is that Trump had received so much angry feedback about giving any kind of amnesty to immigrants, whether they came as children of their immigrating parents or not, that he was afraid to make a concession to Dreamers.

After the tragic shooting in Parkland, Florida, Trump held meetings with students and parents from Marjory Stoneman High School, the nation's governors, a select group of lawmakers, and state and local officials. Near the end of the meeting with the governors, Trump essentially gave up his major proposal, which was to arm a certain percentage of teachers -- it started with 20 percent but later ranged from five to forty percent -- by  conceding that arming teachers might better be done at the state level.

It was at the meeting with lawmakers that President Trump embraced several features of gun control that might survive the legislative process in the wake of the public demand to get something done, stirred up by the articulate protests led by Marjory Stoneman students. Trump proposed to: 1.) raise the age to buy a gun to 21; 2.) broaden the scope of background checks; 3.) "harden" schools; and  4.)  address the issue of keeping guns out of the hands of those with mental illness. Trump had not totally abandoned the idea of arming teachers and he even said that he would "take a look" at Sen. Feinstein's call for a ban on assault rifles.

Trump didn't want  to have a series of bills addressing piecemeal the items he said he would support; instead, he wanted a "beautiful" and "comprehensive" bill that would address all the items he supported. The only exception he made was that he didn't want state concealed carry permits to apply across the nation, as pitched by Republican Rep. Steve Scalise. Notably, Trump emphasized the idea that Republican lawmakers were firmly in the grip of the NRA, and he said they should not be intimidated by the NRA leaders and members, because they were reasonable people who accept disagreement with them on some issues.

After the meeting with lawmakers on February 28, Trump held a private session on March 1 with the NRA. After the meeting with the NRA, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders indicated how Trump's views had changed. He was  interested in improving background checks, but "not necessarily universal background checks." He would not support the bill introduced by Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) that would require the review of firearm purchases online and at gun shows. He would support a much more limited bill from Murphy and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), that would boost participation in the existing federal background check program, as well as a bill that would provide new federal funding to stem school violence.

In regard to raising the age to 21 for gun purchases, Sanders  said that Trump supports it "conceptually" but would prefer to leave it up to the states. Since President Trump had already consigned arming teachers to the states and he supports only a modest incentive to increase reports to a background check data base, there isn't very much he proposes to do. One of his early actions was to rescind by executive order the Obama-era regulation to require the Social Security Administration to send records of those getting benefits for mental illness to a federal database. That regulation involved about 75,000 people. In his current budget, Trump has made sharp cuts in mental illness funding in general. Thus, not much should be expected from Trump in addressing the nexus between mental health and guns.

What may have been a revealing take on President Trump's newly found passion for gun control came from a tweet by Chris Cox, executive director of the NRA's lobbying arm, who wrote he had a "great meeting" with Trump and VP Pence. "We all want safe schools, mental health reform, and to keep guns away from dangerous people." He added that neither Trump nor Pence "want gun control."

ADDENDUMS:
*By a 23 to 3 vote, the Alabama state senate created a constitutional amendment to "fix" school shootings by allowing the Ten Commandments to be displayed on public property.

*Trump's tweet of February 27 says that somebody in the Department of Justice must have evidence of Hillary Clinton's "criminality."

*Economist Paul Krugman has said that while corporations were spending about $6 billion on bonuses, they spent more than $170 billion in stock buybacks. He added that people will pay with cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.

*Sen. Marco Rubio has come out against arming teachers.

*Officials in China, Mexico, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have discussed ways to manipulate Jared Kushner through his complicated business dealings, financial difficulties and inexperience in foreign policy. Kushner and other White House aides have lost their top-secret security clearance.