Speaking to the National Rifle Association (NRA) just days after a gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, failed, one-term, twice-impeached former President Donald Trump insisted Friday that there is no need for sensible gun control legislation.
NBC News reports:
Trump described the Uvalde shooting as “a savage and barbaric atrocity” and called for a moment of silence as he read the names of the 21 victims. The former president said those killed “are now with God in heaven” while the shooter “will be eternally damned to burn in the fires of hell.”
Trump then laid into President Joe Biden for urging Congress to take up gun safety legislation, saying Biden’s criticism of the gun lobby was really directed at gun owners across the country.
As for possible solutions, Trump sounded like his speech had been written by the NRA, and he offered nothing in the way of actually preventing such mass shootings in the future, insisting that the issue is one of mental health:
“While we don’t yet know enough about this week’s killing, we know there are many things we must do. We need to drastically change our approach to mental health. There are always so many warning signs. Almost all of these disfigured minds share the same profile.
“Teachers, parents, school officials, and community members need to be recognizing and addressing these alarm bells promptly and very, very aggressively. And our school discipline systems, instead of making excuses and continually turning a blind eye, need to confront bad behavior head on and quickly. And clearly we need to make it far easier to confine the violent and mentally deranged into mental institutions.”
However, the strangest part of Trump’s address to the NRA was him reading the names of the victims (and mispronouncing nearly every one of them), followed by a gong that made it sound as if a game show was being conducted, HuffPost notes:
The names of the 19 children and two teachers, broken up into hardly recognizable syllables in Trump’s stumbling pronunciation, were interspersed with the funereal sound of a gong.
After reading the names, Trump then danced for the adoring NRA gun worshipers.
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