Trump prods leaders on guns; Walmart to stop selling firearms, ammunition to people under 21

“We can’t wait and play games and nothing gets done,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday at the start of a White House meeting on gun violence where he was joined by House and Senate leaders, including Sens. John Cornyn (left), R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
“We can’t wait and play games and nothing gets done,” President Donald Trump said Wednesday at the start of a White House meeting on gun violence where he was joined by House and Senate leaders, including Sens. John Cornyn (left), R-Texas, and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump on Wednesday called for speedy and substantial changes to the nation's gun laws, criticizing lawmakers in a White House meeting for being too fearful of the National Rifle Association to take action.

In a televised session that stretched for an hour, Trump rejected his party's incremental approach and its legislative strategy that has stalled action in Congress. Giving hope to Democrats, he said he favored a "comprehensive" approach to addressing violence like the shooting at a Florida school last month, although he offered no specific details.

Instead, Trump appeared to support expanded background checks. He endorsed increased school security and mental health resources, and he reaffirmed his support for raising the age to 21 for purchasing some firearms. Trump also mentioned arming teachers and said his administration, not Congress, would ban bump-stock devices that enable guns to fire like automatic weapons.

"We can't wait and play games and nothing gets done," Trump said as he opened the session with 17 House and Senate lawmakers. "We want to stop the problems."

The White House meeting came after fresh public debate over gun laws, fueled by student survivors of the massacre at Florida's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who have been meeting with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. The school reopened Wednesday for the first time since the Feb. 14 shooting killed 14 students and three staff members.

Earlier Wednesday, citing the carnage in Florida, national retailer Dick's Sporting Goods announced that it was halting sales of assault-style rifles and high-capacity magazines at all of its stores and banning the sale of all guns to anyone under 21. Later, Walmart said it would no longer sell firearms and ammunition to people younger than 21 and would remove items that resemble assault-style rifles from its website.

In the televised discussion with Trump, Democratic lawmakers made a point of appealing to the president to use his political power to persuade his party to take action. "It is going to have to be you," Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut told Trump.

Trump has previously backed ideas popular with Democrats only to back away when faced with opposition from his conservative base and his GOP allies in Congress. It was not clear if he would continue to push for swift and significant changes to gun laws if confronted with resistance from his party.

Democrats said they were concerned that Trump's interest may fade quickly.

After the meeting, Murphy told reporters: "I'm worried that this was the beginning and the end of the president's advocacy on this issue. The White House has to put some meat on the bones. The White House has to send a proposal to Congress."

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said she couldn't see how Trump could walk back on his message.

"I think you saw the president clearly saying, not once, not twice, not three times, but like 10 times that he wanted to see a strong, universal background check bill," Klobuchar said. "So I do not understand how then he could back away from that."

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Trump's call for stronger background checks, which are popular among Americans, has been resisted by Republicans in Congress and the NRA. Republicans have instead been leaning toward modest legislation designed to improve the background system already in place. Trump made clear that he was looking for more and accused lawmakers of being "petrified" of the gun lobby.

"Hey, I'm the biggest fan of the Second Amendment," Trump said, adding that he told NRA officials it's time to act. "We have to stop this nonsense."

Trump also blamed his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, for failing to address gun legislation that would address violence in schools.

It's time for a president to "step up," Trump said, adding that Obama "was not proactive in getting a bill signed, in all fairness."

When Sen. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., said Obama did press for gun legislation, Trump responded, "That was your problem."

The meeting was reminiscent of one in January on immigration, when he told lawmakers to come up with a good bill and he would take the "heat" from critics. That effort, however, ended in failure in Congress amid Trump's shifting views and priorities in the debate.

CONGRESS RETICENT

Gun legislation has lost momentum in Congress as Republican leaders showed little interest in pursuing stricter gun-control laws. On Wednesday, GOP lawmakers said they remained skeptical that anything more comprehensive than a modest enhancement of the background check system could make it out of Congress.

"It's easier said than done," said John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican. He added that the Senate "should start with background checks and build from there."

The White House is expected to reveal more on the president's plans for school safety this week, though it has not announced any plans. That announcement will likely include goals for background checks and bump stocks, though whether age restrictions will be specifically addressed remains unclear, according to an administration official who sought anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump rejected the way Republican leaders in Congress have framed the debate, saying the House-backed bill linking a background check measure with a bill to expand gun rights by allowing gun owners to carry concealed weapons across state lines was not the right approach.

The concealed-carry measure is the gun lobby's top legislative priority. But "you'll never get it passed," Trump told lawmakers, reminding them that Democratic senators, including some in the room, strongly oppose it.

Instead, he suggested Republicans should focus on the background check bill, then load it up with other gun control and safety measures.

Among those at the White House on Wednesday was Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who along with Toomey was pushing a bill -- which failed twice in the Senate after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting -- to broaden background checks to include pre-purchase reviews at online and gun show sales.

Trump asked Toomey if his plan to expand background checks included raising the minimum age for young people to buy an assault-style weapon. Toomey told the president that it did not.

"You know why," Trump said. "Because you're afraid of the NRA."

The president's declarations prompted a frantic series of calls from NRA lobbyists to their allies on Capitol Hill, and a statement from the group calling the ideas Trump expressed "bad policy."

"While today's meeting made for great TV, the gun-control policies discussed would make bad policy that wouldn't keep our children safer," said Jennifer Baker, a spokesman for the NRA's lobbying arm. "We are going to continue to work to pass policies that might actually prevent another horrific tragedy."

Republican lawmakers issued statements or told reporters that they remain opposed to gun-control measures.

"We're not ditching any constitutional protections simply because the last person the president talked to today doesn't like them," said Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb.

Trump's comments during the meeting were at odds with his history as a candidate and president who has repeatedly declared his love for the Second Amendment and the NRA, which gave his campaign $30 million. At the group's annual conference last year, Trump declared: "To the NRA, I can proudly say I will never, ever let you down."

DICK'S AND WALMART

The same day Dick's Sporting Goods announced its decision to stop selling assault-style rifles and ban the sale of all guns to anyone under 21, the retailer's chief executive officer took on the NRA by demanding tougher gun laws after the Florida shooting.

"When we saw what the kids were going through and the grief of the parents and the kids who were killed in Parkland, we felt we needed to do something," Chairman and CEO Ed Stack said on ABC's Good Morning America.

The change in sales practices, and the emphatic words from Stack, put Dick's out front in the falling-out between corporate America and the gun lobby. Several major corporations, including MetLife, Hertz and Delta Air Lines, have cut ties with the NRA since the Florida shooting, but until now, none were retailers that sold guns.

The announcement drew hundreds of thousands of responses -- for and against the decision -- on the company's Facebook page.

Dick's Sporting Goods had cut off sales of assault-style weapons after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But sales had resumed at its smaller chain of Field & Stream stores, which consisted of 35 outlets in 16 states as of October. The company operates more than 715 stores across the U.S.

On Wednesday, Stack said that would end, and he called on lawmakers to act now.

He urged them to ban assault-style firearms, bump stocks and high-capacity magazines and raise the minimum age to buy firearms to 21. He said universal background checks should be required and that there should be a complete database of people banned from buying firearms. He also called for the closing of the private-sale and gun-show loopholes that enable purchasers to escape background checks.

"We support and respect the Second Amendment, and we recognize and appreciate that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible, law-abiding citizens," Stack said in a letter. "But we have to help solve the problem that's in front of us. Gun violence is an epidemic that's taking the lives of too many people, including the brightest hope for the future of America -- our kids."

Stack also revealed that Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old arrested in the Florida attack, had bought a shotgun at a Dick's store within the past four months.

"It was not the gun, nor type of gun, he used in the shooting," the CEO wrote. "But it could have been. Clearly this indicates on so many levels that the systems in place are not effective to protect our kids and our citizens."

Walmart explained that its decision came after a review of its firearm sales policy in light of the Parkland shooting. It said it takes "seriously our obligation to be a responsible seller of firearms" and emphasized its background of "serving sportsmen and hunters."

Walmart stopped selling AR-15 guns and other semi-automatic weapons in 2015. It doesn't sell bump stocks or large-capacity magazines. It also says it doesn't sell handguns, except in Alaska.

Walmart didn't mention ammunition in announcing its new policy.

Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly, Catherine Lucey, Ken Thomas, Alan Fram, Andrew Taylor, Zeke Miller, Damian J. Troise, Carrie Antlfinger, Joseph Pisani and Anne D'Innocenzio of The Associated Press; by Sahil Kapur, Toluse Olorunnipa, Justin Sink, Laura Litvan, Steven T. Dennis, Arit John and Yueqi Yang of Bloomberg News; and by Michael D. Shear of The New York Times.



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