CRISIS/GUNS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “As Americans struggled Monday [11-6-17] to make sense once again of the mass shootings plaguing the United States, President Trump sought to steer the national conversation to questions about the mental capacity of those pulling the triggers, not the weapons themselves…
Mr. Trump’s answer to the fifth-deadliest mass shooting in modern American history was much the same as his answer to the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history barely a month ago in Las Vegas. For gun-rights supporters, the focus on mental health has become the standard response to shooting massacres, just as more gun control has been the standard response from the other side of the ideological divide.
As more information became available on Monday, it turned out that the gunman in Texas, identified as Devin P. Kelley, 26, should have already been barred from purchasing firearms because of a domestic violence conviction. While serving in the Air Force, he was convicted of two charges in 2012 by a court-martial after assaulting his wife and breaking his infant stepson’s skull. But the Air Force never entered his name in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.”
-Peter Baker, “Trump Says Issue Is Mental Health, Not Gun Control,” The New York Times online, Nov. 6, 2017