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NATION
East Oregonian
Saturday, August 10, 2019
Trump says he wants background checks, also reassures NRA
President says
leaders are
having ‘serious
discussions’ about
background checks
By ZEKE MILLER AND
DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Pres-
ident Donald Trump said
Friday he believes he has
influence to rally Republi-
cans around stronger fed-
eral background check laws
as Congress and the White
House work on a response to
last weekend’s mass shoot-
ings in Texas and Ohio.
At the same time, Trump
said he had assured the
National Rifle Association
that its gun-rights views
would be “fully represented
and respected.” He said
he was hopeful the NRA
would not be an obstacle to
strengthening the nation’s
gun laws.
Trump has promised to
lead on tougher gun con-
trol measures before, includ-
ing after the 2018 Parkland,
Florida, school shooting,
but little has come of it. His
comments in the wake of the
twin massacres marked his
most optimistic and support-
ive words in favor of more
stringent gun laws, though
he left the details vague
and it remained to be seen
how much political capital
Trump would throw behind
marshaling Republicans on
the issue.
He said Friday he now is
looking for “very meaning-
ful background checks” but
is not considering a resurrec-
tion of an assault weapons
ban. He said he also believes
lawmakers will support “red
flag” laws that allow guns to
be removed from those who
may be a danger to them-
selves and others.
“I see a better feel-
ing right now toward get-
ting something meaningful
done,” Trump told reporters
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
President Donald Trump talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House on Friday in Washington, as he prepares to
leave Washington for his annual August holiday at his New Jersey golf club.
when asked why the politi-
cal environment was differ-
ent now.
“I have a greater influ-
ence now over the Senate
and the House,” he said at
the White House.
Democrats and oth-
ers have been skeptical of
Trump’s commitment to
genuine gun control, judging
from past experience. But he
said he was behind it.
“The Republicans are
going to be great and lead
the charge along with the
Democrats,” he declared,
saying he’d spoken with
Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell whom he
proclaimed to be “totally
onboard.”
But McConnell, thus far,
has only committed to a dis-
cussion of the issue. Repub-
licans have long opposed
expanding
background
checks — a bill passed by
the Democratic-led House
is stalled in McConnell’s
Senate — but they face new
pressure after the shootings
in El Paso, Texas, and Day-
ton, Ohio, that left 31 people
dead.
Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer tweeted in
response Friday that McCo-
nnell must bring up the
House-passed legislation,
which Trump had previously
threatened to veto. “To get
anything meaningful done
to address gun violence, we
need his commitment to hold
a Senate vote on the House-
passed background checks
legislation,” Schumer said.
As for the NRA, which
has contributed millions
to help Trump and other
Republicans, the gun lob-
by’s chief executive, Wayne
LaPierre, said this week that
some federal gun control
proposals “would make mil-
lions of law-abiding Ameri-
cans less safe and less able to
Walmart removes images of violence in
stores after deadly weekend shootings
By MICHELLE
CHAPMAN
Associated Press
NEW
YORK
—
Walmart has ordered work-
ers to remove video game
signs and displays that
depict violence from stores
nationwide after 22 people
died in a shooting at one
of its Texas stores, but will
continue to sell guns.
In an internal memo, the
retailer told employees to
remove any violent market-
ing material, unplug Xbox
and PlayStation consoles
that show violent video
games and turn off any vio-
lence depicted on screens in
its electronics departments.
Employees also were
asked to shut off hunting
season videos in the sport-
ing goods department where
guns are sold.
“Remove from the sales
floor or turn off these items
immediately,” the memo
said.
Walmart will still sell
the violent video games and
hasn’t made any changes to
its gun sales policy, despite
pressure from workers, poli-
ticians and activists to do so.
“We’ve taken this action
out of respect for the inci-
dents of the past week,”
Walmart
spokeswoman
Tara House said in an email.
She declined to answer
any questions beyond the
statement.
“That is a non-answer
and a non-solution,” said
Thomas Marshall, who
works at Walmart’s e-com-
merce division in San
Bruno, California, and has
helped organize a petition to
get the company to stop sell-
ing guns. He said they plan
to email the petition, which
has more than 53,000 sig-
natures, to Walmart CEO
Doug McMillon on Friday.
After the massacre at the
El Paso Walmart this week-
end, McMillon said the
company “will be thought-
defend themselves and their
loved ones.”
But Trump said he’d spo-
ken with LaPierre this week
and “I think in the end,
Wayne and the NRA will
either be there or either be a
little more neutral.”
“Frankly, I really think
they’re going to get there
also,” he added.
On Thursday, McCon-
nell said he now wants back-
ground checks and other
action, setting up a poten-
tially pivotal moment when
lawmakers return in the fall.
The Republican leader
won’t be calling senators
back to work early, as some
are demanding. But he told a
Kentucky radio station that
Trump called him Thurs-
day morning and they talked
about several ideas. The
president, he said, is “anx-
ious to get an outcome and
so am I.”
“What we can’t do is fail
to pass something,” McCon-
nell said.
Traveling with Trump to
New York, South Carolina
Sen. Lindsey Graham said
he intended to discuss the
issue with the president over
the weekend. He said he’s in
favor of a state-run list sys-
tem that would prohibit cer-
tain people from buying
guns.
“I just think the space to
do nothing is gone,” he said.
“And that’s a good thing.”
McConnell said he and
Trump discussed back-
ground checks and “red flag”
laws. “Those are two items
that for sure will be front and
center as we see what we can
come together on and pass,”
McConnell told Louisville’s
WHAS-AM.
House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi and Schumer said
Trump assured them in
phone calls Thursday he will
review the House-passed bill
that would expand federal
background checks for fire-
arm sales.
In a joint statement, they
said Trump called them indi-
vidually after Pelosi sent a
letter asking the president
to order the Senate back to
Washington to consider gun
violence measures.
Schumer and Pelosi said
they told Trump the best
immediate step would be
for the Senate to take up
and pass the House bill.
Trump, they said, “under-
stood our interest in moving
as quickly as possible to help
save lives.”
The politics of gun con-
trol are shifting amid the
frequency and toll of mass
shootings. Spending to sup-
port candidates backing
tougher gun control mea-
sures — mostly Demo-
crats — surged in the 2018
midterms, even as cam-
paign spending by the NRA
declined.
The NRA says proposals
being discussed in Congress
would not have prevented
the shootings in Texas and
Ohio.
McConnell rejected the
idea of reconvening the
Senate, saying calling sen-
ators back now would just
lead to people “scoring
points and nothing would
happen.”
Instead, the GOP leader
wants to spend the August
recess talking with Demo-
cratic and Republican sen-
ators to see what’s possible.
Senators have been talking
among themselves, and
holding conference calls, to
sort out strategy.
The politics of gun vio-
lence are difficult for Repub-
licans, including McCon-
nell. He could risk losing
support as he seeks re-elec-
tion in Kentucky if he were
to back restricting access to
firearms and ammunition.
Other Republicans, includ-
ing those in Colorado, Maine
and swing states, also would
face difficult votes, despite
the clamor for gun laws.
Biden centers campaign where he
started: Donald Trump’s character
ica,” Biden said this week “invasion,” prompting at
in Burlington, Iowa, where least two of Biden’s rivals
he weaved between hushed to brand Trump a “white
BOONE, Iowa — Joe disappointment and incred- supremacist.”
Yet, only Biden has
Biden’s campaign is not ulous fury over a presi-
dent who offers “no made questions of charac-
anchored in a big
moral leadership” ter — that of Trump and the
policy idea like Ber-
nie Sanders’ Medi-
and has “no inter- nation — the centerpiece of
care for All. He is
est in unifying this his White House bid. He
says it was Trump’s equiv-
not proposing trans-
nation.”
formative change
Biden has hardly ocating response to the
like Elizabeth War-
been alone among 2017 racial clash in Char-
ren. Instead, Biden’s
Democratic presi- lottesville, Virginia, that
Biden
dential candidates prompted him to run and
call to voters is
in assailing Trump he has repeatedly declared
a more visceral
one, casting the 2020 race after the latest killings. the election a battle “for the
as a test of the country’s The shooting suspect in El soul of the nation.”
There are risks, of course,
Paso has been linked to a
character.
The recent back-to-back racist screed that echoed for Biden as he asserts so
mass killings in Texas and many of the president’s own relentlessly that “the words
Ohio have, for now, allowed tirades about an immigrant of a president matter.”
Biden to re-center his cam-
paign on those ideas. After
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By BILL BARROW
Associated Press
AP Photo
Walmart is taking down all signs and displays from its stores
that depict violence, following a mass shooting at its El
Paso, Texas, location that left 22 people dead. The retailer,
according to an internal memo, instructed employees to
turn off or unplug any video game consoles that show vio-
lent games, as well as ensure that no movies depicting vio-
lence are playing in its electronics departments.
ful and deliberate in our
responses.”
After the mass shooting
at a Parkland, Florida, high
school last year, Walmart
Inc. banned sales of fire-
arms and ammunition to
people younger than 21. It
had stopped selling AR-15s
and other semi-automatic
weapons in 2015, citing
weak sales.
The massacre in El Paso
was followed by another
shooting hours later in Day-
ton, Ohio, that killed nine
people.
President Donald Trump
blamed “gruesome and
grisly video games” for
encouraging violence Mon-
day, but there is no known
link between violent video
games and violent acts.
The United States has
had 254 mass shootings —
instances of four or more
people being shot in indi-
vidual outbreaks — in 2019,
according to the Gun Vio-
lence Archive. That’s more
mass shootings than days so
far this year.
Scott Galloway, a mar-
keting professor at New
York University, said the
move to hide violent imag-
ery in stores was “a cheap
attempt to distract consum-
ers and the media from the
real issue, which is, Walmart
continues to sell guns.”
Other companies have
made changes after the
shootings. ESPN postponed
the airing of an esports
competition for shooting
game “Apex Legends.” And
NBC Universal pulled some
ads for its upcoming movie
“The Hunt,” which depicted
characters hunting and
shooting at each other.
The killings have put the
country on edge.
On Thursday, panicked
shoppers fled a Walmart in
Springfield, Missouri, after
a man carrying a rifle and
wearing body armor walked
around the store before
being stopped by an off-
duty firefighter. No shots
were fired and the man was
arrested after surrendering.
On Friday, Massachu-
setts Sen. Elizabeth War-
ren, a Democrat running for
president, blasted Walmart
in a tweet.
“The weapons they sell
are killing their own cus-
tomers and employees. No
profit is worth those lives.
Do the right thing —stop
selling guns,” she wrote.
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