Trump Vows ‘Urgent Resolve’ After US Mass Shootings
Trump Vows ‘Urgent Resolve’ After US Mass Shootings
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
The Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our Country. Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years. News coverage has got to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!
Earlier in the day on Twitter, Trump suggested linking gun legislation to immigration reform.
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain. Likewise for those so seriously wounded. We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying…
We cannot let those killed in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, die in vain. Likewise for those so seriously wounded. We can never forget them, and those many who came before them. Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying….
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
….this legislation with desperately needed immigration reform. We must have something good, if not GREAT, come out of these two tragic events!
By Steve Herman VOA : Responding to weekend mass shootings in the United States, U.S. President Donald Trump is vowing “to act with urgent resolve,” explicitly condemning white supremacy and calling for strong background checks for gun purchases.
Trump, however, is not advocating major gun control legislation, disappointing advocates who favor such measures.
Trump made remarks at the White House on Monday, after a pair of mass shootings 13 hours apart in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, in which lone gunmen killed a total of at least 31 people.
“In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy,” said Trump, noting hatred expressed in a “manifesto” attributed to the young white man being held as the suspect for the early Sunday shooting at a Walmart store in the Texas city on the Mexican border. “These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.”
Trump also said, “Hatred warps the mind, ravages the heart and devours the soul.”
Plans are being made for a visit by the president later in the week to both El Paso and Dayton. A trip he had planned to take Tuesday to Florida has been postponed.
In his early Monday remarks, Trump also focused on mental illness, violence in the media and in video games, warning of “the perils of the internet and social media.”
The U.S. leader, however, blamed a favorite target, the mainstream news media in an early Monday tweet, prior to his White House speech.
“The Media has a big responsibility to life and safety in our Country,” Trump tweeted. “Fake News has contributed greatly to the anger and rage that has built up over many years. News coverage has got to start being fair, balanced and unbiased, or these terrible problems will only get worse!”
The U.S. president advocated red flag laws to try to identify those would could potentially commit such mass violence and prevent them from getting their hands on weapons to carry out such crimes.
Trump termed the mass shootings (there have been about 250 in the United States so far this year) “barbaric slaughter” that “are an assault upon our communities, an attack upon our nation and a crime against all of humanity.”
Congress for years has been unable to reach agreement on immigration reforms, which Trump has pushed to thwart migrants, mostly from Central America, from crossing the southern U.S. border with Mexico. On the issue of gun violence, lawmakers only sporadically have enacted gun policy changes in the face of opposition from gun advocates who draw their authority from the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees Americans the right to own a weapon.
“It took less than three hours for the president to back off his call for stronger background check legislation. When he can’t mention guns while talking about gun violence, it shows the president remains prisoner to the gun lobby and the NRA (National Rifle Association),” said the two top Democratic Party lawmakers in Congress, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer in a joint statement. “The public must weigh in and demand passage of this legislation for the safety of our children.”
In a statement released immediately after Trump’s speech, former member of Congress Gabby Giffords said the president’s words alone without action will not save lives.
“Today is not the first time this President has stood before the nation in the wake of a mass shooting promising to make the safety of our children and communities a top priority, but so far those promises have all been empty. They’ve been designed to fill a news cycle, not tackle a cycle of violence,” said Giffords, who was shot in the head in 2011 in a supermarket parking lot as she met with her Arizona constituents. “Make no mistake, if Donald Trump was truly serious about addressing America’s gun violence crisis he would demand that the Senate return from their August Recess today and send the background checks bill passed by the House 159 days ago to his desk immediately.”
Authorities say that in the border city of El Paso, a gunman opened fire at a Walmart store, killing at least 22 people and wounding 26. They are investigating the attack as a possible hate crime and seeking to confirm that the suspect, 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, who has been jailed, was the author of an online posting predicting a shooting spree intended to target Hispanics. The man lived in the Dallas area, hundreds of kilometers away from El Paso.
Trump’s Democratic opponents, including several seeking their party’s nomination to run against him in the 2020 election, have blamed his oft-repeated anti-immigration rhetoric as fostering the hate that contributed to the El Paso mass killing.
Officials say they will seek the death penalty for the Texas attack, which they are treating as an act of domestic terrorism.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador said six Mexican citizens were among those killed in El Paso. Mexicans near the border town frequently cross into El Paso to shop at Walmart.
Lopez Obrador on Sunday called on the United States to stop confronting social problems “with the use of force and by inciting hate.” Trump has called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “criminals.”
Authorities in Ohio are also searching for a motive behind the rampage in Dayton early Sunday, unleashed by the gunman who killed nine, including his sister, and shooting 14 other people in a nightlife district. Others were injured fleeing in panic.
Police have identified that gunman as Connor Betts, a 24-year-old community college student, and said he was wearing body armor and carrying extra magazines containing up to 250 rounds of ammunition.
Less than a minute after opening fire and firing 41 rounds, Betts was killed by police outside a crowded bar. He had expressed hostility during his high school years, including compiling a “hit list” of those he wanted to kill and a “rape list” of girls he wanted to sexually assault, according to former classmates.
Police say there was nothing in his background that would have prevented him from legally purchasing the weapons and ammunition he used in the Dayton attack.
The U.S. once banned the sale of assault-type weapons like those employed by the gunmen in the El Paso and Dayton incidents, but the law was allowed to lapse in 2004.
The Texas and Ohio shootings occurred a week after a gunman killed three people at a food festival in California.
According to monitoring groups, more than 250 mass shootings have occurred in the United States this year.