According to Vanity Fair, in the aftermath of the tragic Parkland shooting in 2018, former President Donald Trump made surprising statements that appeared to indicate his support for addressing gun violence. However, these statements turned out to be empty promises as he failed to take any meaningful action to pass a universal background check bill. A new report reveals that Trump’s inaction on gun control can be attributed, in part, to his close ties with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the significant financial support they provided to his 2016 election campaign.
According to Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official under Trump, in his upcoming book “Blowback,” efforts were made within the administration to produce a report on school safety following the Parkland shooting. Josh Venable, the chief of staff at the Education Department, was tasked with overseeing the creation of the report, which involved input from multiple agencies. The recommendations included exploring the idea of raising the minimum age for firearms purchases to 21. However, when it came to reviewing the draft report, the NRA was given the power to veto any mention of firearms, a move that Venable found absurd given the purpose of the report.
Trump’s fear of losing the NRA’s support and his close alignment with the organization resulted in the report being watered down and devoid of meaningful recommendations. The NRA effectively exerted influence over a supposedly independent report on mass shootings, a privilege not extended to teachers, state school officers, or mental health professionals involved in the process. This episode highlighted Trump’s reluctance to address the issue of gun violence and his prioritization of appeasing the NRA over taking concrete action.
Taylor describes how Betsy DeVos, the secretary of education at the time, initially supported Venable but eventually succumbed to pressure from the White House and the NRA. The final report failed to mention firearms as a contributing factor to school shootings and instead stated that existing research did not demonstrate the effectiveness of age minimums in reducing homicides, suicides, or unintentional deaths. Ironically, the Parkland shooting was carried out by a perpetrator who was under the age of 21 and had legally obtained a firearm.
The report sheds light on Trump’s lack of interest in addressing gun violence. During the release of the report, when Trump was briefed on how the Department of Homeland Security could help protect schools, he showed little interest and instead focused on unrelated topics such as the border wall.
The day the report dropped, I was actually in the Oval Office with the president. My job was to brief him on how DHS could help protect school buildings. Trump was uninterested. He used the allotted time to rant about the border wall (“I want it to be a work of art,” he mused), whether it could be painted black to burn the hands of anyone who touched it (“How much would that cost?”), if Congress would fund it (“If they don’t give me the money, we shut the whole fucking border”), and whether there were any ways to put more pressure on America’s southern neighbor (“Let’s stick it to the Mexicans!”). Down the hall, the parents of school-shooting victims waited to meet with the president. He was late, again.
