It is a recurring pattern.
As president, Trump changed his mind again in 2018 after the high school shooting in Parkland, Florida, insisting that stronger checks would be “fully backed” by the White House. But that position lasted only a few days, until a meeting with the National Rifle Association, after which he backed off his support.
On Friday, in the wake of massacres in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, Trump presented himself as a deal-maker eager to bring Democrats and Republicans together behind tougher background checks.
But the president’s long history on the gun issue raises questions about his real commitment to legislation that would improve the background check system and close loopholes that have allowed firearms to be bought and sold at gun shows without any knowledge of a buyer’s history.
How far the president is willing to go — and whether his support for background checks is just another momentary reversal — is likely to determine whether the country responds to 31 deaths in two mass shootings with the first significant federal gun control measures in years.
Trump said Friday that there was “tremendous” support for “really common-sense sensible, important background checks” even as the NRA and gun rights supporters vowed to oppose them. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was “on board,” the president insisted, and the gun lobby, which in the past has been brutally effective in defeating such measures in Congress, would “get there.”
But Trump’s bravado will be tested by the reality of partisan politics, as well as the looming presidential campaign and his own lack of ideological moorings on the issue.
“Trump has more opinions on gun safety than a Magic 8 Ball,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading gun control group. “If he means what he says, he will call Mitch McConnell up and get a pledge from him to bring the Senate back.”
If he doesn’t, Feinblatt said, “it won’t meet the moment, and it’s a clear cave to the NRA.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.