Trump Rips Biden’s ‘Highly Divisive and Dangerous’ Political Rhetoric after Uvalde Shooting
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Former president Donald Trump on Friday criticized “cynical politicians seeking to exploit the tears of sobbing families” in the wake of the Robb Elementary School shooting that left 19 students and two adults dead.
Trump opened his speech at the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum in Houston, Texas, by describing the massacre as a “savage and barbaric atrocity that shocks the conscience of every American,” before reading each victim’s name as a bell tolled.
The former president then said it is time to find common ground, adding that “sadly, before the sun had even set on the horrible day of tragedy, we witnessed a now-familiar parade of cynical politicians seeking to exploit the tears of sobbing families to increase their own power and take away our constitutional rights.”
“Every time a disturbed or demented person commits such a hideous crime, there’s always a grotesque effort by some in our society to use the suffering of others to advance their own extreme political agenda,” he said. “Even more repulsive is their rush to shift blame from the villains who commit acts of mass violence and to place that blame onto the shoulders of millions of peaceful, law-abiding citizens who belong to organizations such as our wonderful NRA.”
He continued: “When Joe Biden blamed the gun lobby, he was talking about Americans like you, and along with countless other Democrats this week, he was shamefully suggesting that Republicans are somehow okay with letting school shootings happen.
“They’re not okay with it,” Trump said. “This rhetoric is highly divisive and dangerous, and most importantly it’s wrong, has no place in our politics.”
On Tuesday, President Biden addressed the country and said, “As a nation, we have to ask, when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God’s name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?”
Members of Biden’s party quickly moved to politicize the tragedy, with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand claiming that voters’ “lives depend” on electing Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections and claiming the NRA wants to give weapons to “anyone, at any time, for any reason.”
Meanwhile, Trump said on Friday that there are various gun-control policies being pushed by the Left that would have “done nothing to prevent the horror that took place.”
He said that while we don’t yet know enough about this week’s killings, there are several things we must do, including dramatically changing the country’s approach to mental health, revamping school discipline systems to “confront bad behavior head-on and quickly,” and making it easier to confine the “violent and mentally deranged” into mental institutions.
He said the country must also deal with the problem of “broken families, because no law can cure the effects of a broken home,” before calling on politicians to reach across the aisle and work together.
Salvador Ramos, 18, opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom on Tuesday with a legally purchased AR-15. He was ultimately killed in an exchange of gunfire with law-enforcement officers.
Before Ramos turned 18, he tried to have his sister purchase a gun for him in September 2021, though she “flatly refused,” according to Texas Department of Public Safety director Steven McCraw.
Ramos was also discussed as a “school shooter” in February of 2022 in a group chatroom he was part of on Instagram where he discussed buying a gun.
He legally purchased two rifles in the days following his 18th birthday, the Houston Chronicle reported. One day after his 18th birthday, he purchased one of the rifles from a federally licensed gun store, which would have required a background check, according to the report. He purchased 375 rounds of ammunition one day later and a second rifle on May 20.
The suspect in another recent massacre at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y., that left 13 people dead had passed a background check before legally buying a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic rifle from a gun store in Endicott, N.Y., which he then illegally modified to hold a larger magazine, according to the New York Times.
“He didn’t stand out — because if he did, I would’ve never sold him the gun,” the gun-store owner told the paper of Buffalo shooting suspect Payton Gendron.
In the wake of the recent shootings, a bipartisan group of ten senators plans to negotiate in an attempt to pass legislation aimed at curbing gun violence in the U.S.
Senator Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) is leading the talks, which have focused on several proposals including expanded background checks, enhanced school security, and red-flag laws that allow the confiscation of firearms from those deemed dangerous, the Associated Press reported.
The group plans to work on the legislation through the Senate’s recess and introduce it for a vote in early June.
