For Trump, it is already time to move on from the issue of mass shootings. Just as the cycle of outrage normally passes after innocent people, including children, are gunned down in an act of senseless violence, it has already done so for Trump. As for the rest of the country, the president may be surprised to find that they have not yet moved on.
Trump let everyone know on Twitter Friday morning that he’s ready to go back to his complaints regarding the real danger facing the American public: brown people. After years of hearing that Americans who favor common sense gun control laws are demonizing all gun owners unfairly based on the actions of just a few bad actors, we are now to listen to Trump tell us we have to stop all undocumented immigrants from being able to enter the country because a few of them have joined gangs and committed crimes. The irony is lost on no one but Donald Trump.
The truth looks far different than in Trump’s telling. According to The Washington Post, since well before Trump won an electoral college vote:
‘Immigration rates are slowing, and violent crime is at historic record lows, yet the rhetoric about both could not be more heated. The number of new legal immigrants leveled off starting with the Great Recession, while the absolute number of unauthorized immigrants has been falling since 2007. Crime rates have been dropping sharply for far longer, especially for violent crimes, which are just half as common as in 1993, according to FBI statistics.’
What is on the rise, however, are deaths due to mass shootings. Those statistics have not fallen and will not fall until common sense gun reform laws are enacted. Those laws will not, and should not, include arming teachers or hiring armed guards for every American school. The real common sense will never come from the NRA-bought GOP, however, and Trump has made that obvious by his willingness to simply move on from the subject of mass shootings and gun violence and back to a border wall that Mexico will never pay to erect.
Twitter weighed in with their thoughts. See some of their best comments below:
Featured image via Getty/MANDEL NGAN
