Parkland Massacre Is On Trump After He Revoked Obama-Era Gun Checks For The Mentally Ill

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A year after President Trump quietly revoked Obama-era background checks for people with people for mental illness, a 19-year-old disgruntled former student armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and multiple ammunition magazines shot and killed at least 17 people at his former Florida school.

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Then Donald Trump told the nation that his administration was committed to tackling the issue of mental health.

One day after a mass shooting at a Florida high school killed at least 17 people at a Florida high school, President Trump said in a national address that his administration is committed to tackling the issue of mental health.

The Republican President said making schools safer would be a top priority.

Clip of Trump reading a prepared statement:

“We must also work together to create a culture in our country that embraces the dignity of life, that creates deep and meaningful human connections,” Trump said.

“We are here for you, whatever you need, whatever we can do to ease your pain,” he said.

And yet, almost a year ago on February 28, 2017, Trump quietly signed a bill revoking Obama-era gun checks with people for mental illness.

The regulation Trump revoked was one that made it harder for people with a mental illness to buy a gun. For example, it added people who were on Social Security for mental illness to the national background check database.

In what way does a rule like this threaten “the right to own a gun”? It does not, in any way, threaten that right. Rights like gun ownership come with responsibilities.

If conservatives truly feel so threatened by a regulation that was meant to weed out people who have established mental health challenges from buying a gun, perhaps there are larger issues they could be addressing for themselves.

It was a rule President Obama put into place after Congress refused to do its job for the people after the Sandy Hook mass shooting. It never even had time to be fully put into place, as it was to take effect in December of 2016 and Trump revoked it in February of 2017.

Does Donald Trump even know what he signed? How does he account for revoking a law that could possibly have prevented this tragedy or at least was on the right path, a rule that at the very least needed to be expanded not revoked?

We won’t know because Trump spoke in televised remarks from the White House, rather than taking questions. Yesterday, the White House used the shooting as an excuse to cancel the daily briefing.

People will argue that we can’t know if this law would have saved lives yesterday. But they can’t legitimately argue that revoking that rule saved lives. It only saved the NRA. It surely can and will be argued that revoking it allowed people who should not own a gun to buy one in the last year.

It can be argued that this shooting is on Trump for revoking this bill. No, he didn’t shoot the gun and we don’t know specifically if the rule would have prevented this specific shooter from his deadly massacre.

But we do know that Donald Trump revoked a very benign rule that was the least of what we should be doing. He took this country in the opposite direction, away from protection and into danger. He did this deliberately and without thought to the horror from which it was meant to protect us.

Donald Trump is a careless and reckless leader at the best of times, and a dangerous one most of the time.

The NRA gets its money’s worth with the mostly Republican lawmakers and presidents whose souls it buys.

Any lawmaker, no matter their side of the aisle, who puts protecting gun manufacturer’s profits ahead of protecting children’s lives needs to be kicked out of office in the upcoming 2018 midterms.

(Additional reporting by Reuters’ Roberta Rampton)

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