A Constant In the Chaos

In a White House riddled with chaos and uncertainty, there is at least one consistent strategy for Li’L Donnie Trump. If Obama wanted it, it’s gone.

 

Take gun control for example. 

 

After the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting, Trump vowed to use his executive authority to enact gun control through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

 

Except, Trump has been actually pushing the ATF in the opposite direction, delaying new gun-safety rules that the Obama administration had been developing.

 

As part of Trump's government-wide push for deregulation, the ATF has stalled a number of gun regulations that had been moving forward under Obama, including a new requirement to make secure gun storage or safety devices more widely available.

 

"That is something that could really save a lot of lives," said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a pro-gun-control group. "Dealers have an important role to play in terms of preventing gun deaths in this country."

 

"This is a no-brainer if you want to promote gun safety," said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, who added that safe storage could help prevent teen suicides, accidental shootings, school shootings and gun thefts.

 

Trump did the same thing on proposed changes to existing prohibitions on gun sales to those determined by a court to be mentally ill. Under the 1968 Gun Control Act, those who are deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial or who are involuntarily committed to a mental institution are barred from buying or selling guns that have crossed state lines.

 

Obama's Justice Department proposed expanding the prohibitions to those who were found guilty but mentally ill by a court, as well as those who were involuntarily committed to outpatient mental institutions.

 

On Trump's inauguration day, a senior ATF official proposed rolling back a host of gun regulations in a white paper he wrote with the help of an industry lobbyist. The administration has taken other steps to relax current gun rules in its first year, following on Trump's campaign promises to uphold the Second Amendment and support the National Rifle Association.

 

A lot of this can be attributed to a lockstep devotion to the influence of the NRA. But taken in tandem with other issues not related to guns, such as pulling out of the Paris climate accords, reversals on environmental protections, roll backs on clean energy initiatives and more, the broader pattern still persists: if Obama wanted it, it has to go.