The Trump gun trajectory: From banning assault weapons to NRA endorsement
by Rob Crilly
| August 05, 2019 01:36 PM
"I generally oppose gun control, wrote Donald Trump in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve, “but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun.â€
It was an uncontroversial view for a freewheeling New Yorker, who moved in the same circles as Bill and Hillary Clinton, and liked to speak his mind.
Twelve years later, even after he had begun his shift to the right, Trump endorsed Barack Obama’s push for tougher gun control in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting that cost the lives of 20 children and six members of staff.
“President Obama spoke for me and every American in his remarks in Connecticut,†he tweeted.
But his line shifted as he joined the Republican race for president in 2015 and in office has fluctuated at times between an apparent instinct for action after mass shootings tempered by an embrace of conservative causes. Those views are back in the spotlight after another weekend of gun violence.
“I am a Second amendment person,†he declared in early 2016 during a Republican presidential debate, before claiming that armed bystanders could have limited the death toll in San Bernadino, where 14 people were shot dead a month earlier.
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