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Trump gun policy based on reelection concerns: Analyst

Thursday, 22 February 2018 4:55 AM [ Last Update: Thursday, 22 February 2018 4:55 AM ]

US President Donald Trump’s decision to curb the use of gun-enhancing devices such as a bump-stock ban is a late and inadequate decision that is mostly motivated by reelection concerns, says an African American journalist in Detroit.

“Trump is merely responding because he thinks he will be very vulnerable in the upcoming 2020 [presidential] elections,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan-African News Wire.

“It’s not a genuine approach, it’s a half-hearted- approach, and it’s an approach that really does not get to the heart of the issue,” Azikiwe told Press TV on Sunday.

“We’ve had so many mass shootings in this country…this is happening on a daily basis in the United States,” he added.

Last week, Nikolas Cruz, an ex-student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, opened fire with an AR-15-style assault rifle, killing 17 people in his former school. It was the second-deadliest shooting at a public school in US history.

It was also the 18th school shooting since January 1 in the United States, which loses around 33,000 people to gun violence every year.

PressTV-Trump mulling gun age limit, orders bump-stock ban

Donald Trump has reportedly said he is open to the idea of imposing a minimum purchase age of 21 for semiautomatic weapons.

US students who survived the deadly mass shooting in Florida are calling for a march on Washington, DC, next month to demand political action on gun violence epidemic in the US.

Student organizers of the protest, dubbed the “March for Our Lives,” told US media that they are determined to use protests to make the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas a turning point in the national debate over gun control.

The organizers said they will demand members of the US Congress to pass gun control legislation, which has always been opposed and foiled by the National Rifle Association (NRA), a powerful lobby group that advocates for gun rights.

The protesters also attacked Trump and other politicians for accepting political donations from the NRA.

The Republican-controlled Congress last year revoked Obama-era regulations meant to make it harder for those with severe mental illness to pass FBI background checks for guns, saying the rule deprived the mentally ill of their gun rights.

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