Buy more guns
Yesterday it was hooray god, today it was hooray guns.
President Trump on Friday addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting here in a speech that served as a rallying cry to his base, an attack on his detractors and a signal of his strong support for the gun rights group after suggesting months earlier he was open to some firearm restrictions.
For a few hours after Parkland he pretended to care, then it was back to normal.
But any streak of independence from the NRA was gone Friday, as Trump allied himself with some of the gun group’s biggest priorities in a rambling, 45-minute speech that focused as much on his foreign policy agenda, approval ratings and the latest in the Russia investigation as it did on gun policy.
His speeches are all rambling, because he’s that insufferable guy who thinks every word he utters is fascinating no matter how trivial and self-involved.
“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege,” Trump told the NRA members, whom he referred to as patriots. “But they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”
That’s “rambling” all right – i.e. a flat contradiction. Your rights are under siege, but they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president, and I’m your president now, but your rights are under siege. QED.
To bolster his case for arming teachers and adding guards, Trump argued “there is no stronger deterrent for a sick individual than the knowledge that their attack will end their life and end in total failure.”
Wrong. Lots of shooters intend the attack to end their lives.
While Trump used the speech to firmly embrace the NRA’s agenda, he also treated it like a campaign rally — urging members to vote in the midterm elections, boasting about the improving unemployment numbers, touting the recent tax cuts, criticizing the media and lambasting the investigation into Russia’s meddling in the election.
The campaign part is secondary really; the reason he loves doing this is because it’s a chance to brag about himself and get cheers and applause in response. It’s his happy place.
Cues up video of Alek Minassian’s arrest.
Yes I had that thought.
It doesn’t seem to bother anyone of them that teachers do not want to be armed. Except a few, but there are always those in a crowd. Most teachers resist the idea, because we know it’s dangerously ignorant.
But did he mention his Electoral College win and the record crowds for his inauguration? No True Trump Speech (or Interview, or Press Conference) is truly complete without mentioning these things, too. Either the report leaves these out, or Trump is slipping.
YNnB, I suspect no Trump dream or sleepwalking is complete without those. Probably every dinner conversation – Melania probably has to wear ear plugs because he says these things so often and it’s boring.
And now he has his little friends popping up on Radio 4 spouting total eyewash about the comparative death rates from shootings in the US and UK.
(Yes, we now have a worrying outbreak of knife crime in very specific places. That will be solved when we put back the police officers on the beat, restore youth clubs and other projects, use the knowledge and experience we already have and give back to schools the extra funding they need to identify and support youngsters before they go completely off the rails – all taken away by the f’ing Tories, difficult now to persuade them to change course. You can, of course, only kill one person at a time with a knife.)
Is there anyone in Trump’s entourage bright enough to see that you can’t make a direct read over from mass shootings to either knife crime or terrorist attacks? Almost certainly not.
Anyway, I knew this would come up so I checked it out over my first coffee this morning. So here we go …
1987 Hungerford 16 dead – illegally held military handguns
1989 Monkseaton 1 dead, 14 injured
1996 Dunblane 17 dead
1997 Law changes
2010 Cumbria 12 dead, 11 injured – a .22 rifle and a shotgun, both legally held
And that’s it. Less than 50 dead in spree shootings and multiple-murder suicides since the end of WWII. Plenty of murder, plenty of deaths from domestic violence because we are not perfect but however much you love the NRA you cannot compare!