Is he following in the footsteps of George H. W. Bush?
This has always been the problem with Trump: He doesn’t have any firm ideological principles and is first and foremost a populist. This would be an opportunity for him to explain why these things won’t work, but it’s not clear that he even understands that, and instead he is going along with them.
More 73-dimensional chess! When Trump says Fredo Cuomo should be red-flagged, the Democrats are going to stop talking about it–heaven forbid they do something Trump suggests.
Trump’s as good at rope-a-dope as Muhammad Ali.
Did you read the article?
I would go with 73-dimensional chess. Trump is staying in front of the issue while keeping the focus on crazy people, the ones who everyone knows are dangerous and crazy and who would easily get voted “most likely to commit a mass shooting” by their high-school class. In some of these shootings the perps got through the NICS background check system because states failed to pass on data regarding people who’d been picked up for psychiatric evaluation for violent threats. In other cases law enforcement simply wouldn’t do anything at all despite repeated calls to the suspect’s home. Letting violent crazy people buy guns just builds support for gun control measures that would only affect normal people.
McConnell, Graham, and many other Republicans aren’t likely to pass a red-flag law that gives confiscatory powers to crazy ex-girlfriends, and the real push back won’t start until the Senate starts debating various proposals. Anything the Senate Republicans might pass will be rejected by Schumer as not going far enough, and since extremely pro-gun Republicans will be disinclined to support anything that increases government power, nothing is likely to pass the Senate. And of course anything the House passes doesn’t have a prayer of getting through the Senate, much less getting signed by Trump.
I think he’ll back some measures that nearly everyone would support regarding young people showing signs of schizophrenia (the Gifford’s shooter and The Joker) and morons discussing their upcoming mass slaughter on 8chan, and then wait for Congressional Democrats either reject those bills or poison them by adding red flag provisions that give the ultimate confiscation authority to Facebook.
He’s done similar things many times before, backing Democrats into corner after corner and making them vote against measures their own voters support, or making them vote against their own party’s proposals, such as happened regarding The Green New Deal. I’d bet that his plan is to once again appear to be the sane person in the room while Democrat candidates run to the left, demanding universal gun confiscation or even crazier measures that would totally divorce them from union members and working class constituents.
As much as I respect Kopel’s opinions on guns, his piece at The National Review begins:
It’s Friday, and National Review always leaps to “one termer” on days that end in ‘y’, but I give them props for writing such a long article on Bush-41’s failure to get re-elected without once mentioning Ross Perot. So are we to believe that NRA members are so powerful they stopped Bush, yet so stupid that they voted for Bill Clinton instead? An analysis of ’92 and ’96 that doesn’t include Perot will almost inevitably reach invalid explanations.
I’ll wait until there are concrete suggestions in the Senate before I think it’s time to ring their phones off the hook, although I’m sure they’re already getting plenty of feedback from gun owners. I really doubt we’ll see any red flag law passed that is open to obvious abuses, and I doubt they’ll manage to pass any law at all, given the state of entrenched gridlock.
Arguably, while Bush probably would have won if Perot hadn’t entered the race, it was also probably Bush’s domestic fecklessness that caused Perot to get into the race.
I’m not a fan of the government looking at someone’s opinions before deciding they can exercise their other rights.
I keep hearing that Trump has no ideology and that he will do this or that but have been pleasantly surprised so far and the media is more interested in spreading disinformation than information, so I don’t think we can take the speculation too seriously.
Whenever someone announces Trump may do something; I wait a week to see if he actually does. I haven’t found the prediction to be accurate even most of the time. Maybe it is this time, but I’ll wait and see. For now, I agree with Rick. When Trump tweeted about Fredo and Red Flag; it was a reasonable signal that he’s equating them, which is to say both are equally ridiculous.
Trump ideology might be that politically correct is nonsense and Trump wants to make America great.
The idea that a US government bureaucracy can make foreign country better is not reasonable. It seems more likely a US government bureaucracy could improve the life of it’s US citizens. But so far, there is lack of evidence of this happening.
Trump is already a great president, and used to be that a requirement of great president usually involved having two terms.
I think the only way for some future President outshine Trump, is if the future President opens the space frontier.
But if Trump gets around to doing this, it going to pretty hopeless for future Presidents
The Toomey-Manchin bill was promoted with the sweetener that it would toughen the existing ban on a federal gun registry and would improve the laws protecting the interstate transportation of firearms. In fact, close reading of the bill showed that it expressly authorized a vast amount of new gun registration and gutted the existing protections for interstate transport for persons who travel to the most restrictive states, such as New York, New Jersey, and Massaschusetts. It would have vastly increased data collection and retention on law-abiding gun owners.
For anyone who doesn’t consume the Derb regularly, his latest is worth perusal. He lives on Long Island and recently had his hand guns confiscated.
Speaking of whom, I predict there will not be another Assault Weapons Ban fiasco because leftists have lost their attention span to YouTube and Twitter. Last time there was a carefully planned vilification of some guns. This time they jumped ahead to deploring white people with guns.
Orange gun bad!
More seriously, it’s difficult to demonize evil orange guns when you no longer control The Narrative, and gun owners can easily point out to thinking people what kind of nonsense the government is peddling. It’s also much easier to coordinate opposition these days.
And it’s pointless to try banning them when people are making AR-15s out of melted-down beer cans.
Hence the push for confiscation laws, and ‘ammunition control’.
Don Jr is a big-time gun guy. He is the one who needs to bring the President and Ivanka down to earth on this one before it’s too late. I blame Ivanka for part of this, I think she is the one egging him on.
I agree with Rick C., and George. Trump plays way out in front of the National Review. While it is possible the President stepped in it, he has led many down this path before.
Is Trump stupid enough to believe he will pick up even one vote from any kind of gun control? I suppose we are about to find out.