11/6/2017
Donald Trump signed a bill earlier this year that rolled back a regulation making it harder for people with mental illness to buy firearms. Yet he blamed the mass shooting at a Texas church on “a mental health problem”.
“One of his first actions as president trashed a new regulation that would have prevented potentially irresponsible and mentally incompetent people from being able to buy guns” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, the gun control group started by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Ambler added, “Blaming mental health is a tactic straight out of the gun lobby’s playbook that’s meant to paralyze Congress. Donald Trump’s goal is to make people think our leaders don’t have the power to prevent gun violence.”
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., echoed those remarks, stating, “Any link between mental health and gun violence in a particular situation cannot be used as an excuse for inaction on common sense gun violence measures.” “It is the height of hypocrisy for President Trump — who called the latest tragic mass shooting ‘a mental health problem at the highest level’ — to have rolled back a rule specifically designed to prevent some gun violence deaths,” Blumenthal added in a statement.
In February, just weeks into his presidency, Trump signed a bill eliminating an Obama regulation that made it more difficult for those suffering from mental illness to buy guns. The rule, which had been finalized in December 2016, added people receiving Social Security checks for mental illnesses and people deemed unfit to handle their own financial affairs to the national background gun-check database. Had the rule fully taken effect, the Obama administration predicted it would have added about 75,000 names to the database.
Obama proposed the regulation in 2013 following the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. At the time, the measure was hotly contested by gun rights advocates who said it infringed on Second Amendment rights. The National Rifle Association applauded Trump for signing the bill which made it easier for the mentally ill to buy guns. Chris Cox, the group’s chief lobbyist, said at the time that it marked “a new era for law-abiding gun owners, as we now have a president who respects and supports our arms.”
The mass shooting at the Texas church resulted in 26 dead including many children. This was proceeded last week by a shooter in Colorado who entered a Wal-Mart and killed three random customers, and the October 1st mass killing in Las Vegas resulting in 58 dead and 546 injured.
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