After back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio in August 2019, President Trump took to a White House podium to denounce gun violence. His remarks called for an end to the “glorification of violence” and legislation that would apply the death penalty to shooters. Further, he stressed that “this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.” Trump claimed that if his administration could get this done, it would mean the victims would “not have died in vain.” Then Trump addressed the victims directly, saying, “May God bless the memory of those who perished in Toledo.”
The mass shooting was in Dayton, not Toledo. But even more offensive to the victims, Trump dropped any plans to push Congress to look at gun laws three months later—which means, according to the vow he made in his speech, those victims sadly died in vain.
Because of empty Republican promises and the National Rifle Association’s stranglehold on GOP members, mass shootings continue to occur at an average of more than one a day in the United States. (A mass shooting is mainly defined as three or more persons shot in one incident, excluding the perpetrator. At the Trump rally in Pennsylvania, one attendee died and two others were critically injured. Trump was injured but not critically.)
