People are understandably asking why the FBI didn’t know more and didn’t do more with what they did know about Nikolas Cruz. That criticism seems fair to me, although I wouldn’t go so far as to blame the director of the bureau. James and Kimberly Snead, who were letting Cruz live in their home, didn’t seem to suspect a thing about him, which shows how hard it is to identify mass shooters in advance. And while I feel worse for the parents and loved ones of people who were traumatized, injured, or killed, I still have something left to feel badly for this couple.
Keeping in mind that parts of their story may be self-serving, it seems like they tried to do a good deed by helping a young friend of their son who had just lost his mother after losing his father years before. They made him buy a locked cabinet for his guns and ask for permission to get the key, which he did on two prior occasions. Once they said yes and once they said no. But, unfortunately that was a ruse because he had retained a key for himself. They also insisted that he attend adult learning classes and even gave him rides because he didn’t drive. While he lived there, he also was employed at least part of the time. He rode his bike to work at the dollar store.
It’s going to be hard for a lot of people to believe that this kid could have the online persona he had without tipping off this couple that he was a violent, racist, anti-Semitic sociopath. But it’s believable to me. They were more consumed the night before the shooting on figuring out why he did things like putting a chocolate chip cookie in his cheese steak before he ate it.
Clearly he was weird. The Sneads said that he had the personality type that would attract a bully. He also was understandably severely depressed to find himself parentless as such a young age. There was a lot there to claw through before you could discern warning signs if you weren’t privy to what he was doing and saying online.
The Sneads actually saw him at the police station and he apologized to them. They said he looked utterly lost. I could change my mind if more information comes to light, but I don’t think the Sneads deserve criticism and they certainly don’t deserve to be in the position they’re in right now where they can’t possibly feel comfortable in their community ever again.
Unfortunately, life isn’t laid out neatly in good vs bad. These school shooter kids are often alike in many ways, being victims of bullies, coming from dysfunctional homes, pressured and ridiculed by teachers and society for being different. And while I’ve known a few guys in my life who fit that profile, they never killed anyone. Nobody wants to believe their child or friend is capable of those terrible things.
The FBI admitted that they missed the red flags. I think the director Wray is under fire because Trump and the Republicans want him gone, and this is a convenient way to do it. But on the other hand, the Bureau gets thousands of tips about cyber crime and potential shooters. Their funding doesn’t allow for a giant pool of analysts who can sift through the avalanche of emails. The Trump administration has a reputation for cutting funding and then whining when things fall apart and blaming the victims. And they’ll do anything to point the finger at anyone else.
I hope the grassroots efforts of people of all ages can coalesce to form a solid front against the NRA and the Republican Party who put gunpower over human life. We have to get it right.
But on the other hand, the Bureau gets thousands of tips about cyber crime and potential shooters. Their funding doesn’t allow for a giant pool of analysts who can sift through the avalanche of emails.
This doesn’t hold water at all. The FBI isn’t under-funded. Chasing around white supremacists isn’t high on their list. Chasing supposed black nationalists and Muslims with mental health issues is. Just read the news.
One could wonder what exactly they would do with a tip. They can interview the subject and report him to the local police, but they can’t take away his gun or throw him in a detention center,if he has done nothing wrong. And even if they took his gun it has been reported he had ten rifles. Perhaps though just talking to him may have prevented it.
The 17year old student, Emma Gonzales, said In her speech that they all knew it since middle school, that everyone knew it. He was strange. But nothing stopped it.
So, yes, the FBI screwed up. But there is a limit to what anyone could do or ever did. Sell someone an assault rifle and you deal with the consequence.
We don’t allow people to purchase alcohol until they are 21. I don’t understand why teenagers should be allowed to buy or even use a gun unless they are in the military.
Ultimately, what all these disparate mass shootings have in common is that they were all committed with one or another kind of assault weapon. Bring back the ban on assault rifles. No exceptions.
That would be a good beginning.
What exactly was the FBI supposed to do? The current administration has instructed them to reduce emphasis on white supremacist groups like this and their limited ability to take away guns has been even further reduced lately. The FBI could only act if it identified a specific conspiracy, which probably didn’t even exist, aside from the problem that they’ve been instructed by Sessions not to look for that kind of thing from white supremacists. They could perhaps have shared this information with Florida, but I don’t see what Florida could have, or at least would have, done. FL couldn’t take away his guns and preventive detention is possible only for specific crimes, which I doubt were provable in this case.
Look, the fact is that the FBI is spending all their resources expanding the power of the Deep State™ and bringing down Maximum Leader. Once we cut their staffing, budget and power surely they’ll be rounding up mass shooters in no time.
C’mon, Booman…
James and Kimberly Snead… “…a decorated army veteran and…military intelligence analyst” and “…a neonatal intensive care nurse who cares for premature and ill babies” are two good advertisements for not trusting the military,the intelligence system or the healthcare system. Dumb as sticks, both of them.
Sorry, but there it is. Trust this violent kid not to have a 2nd key!!!???
Please!!!
At least you caveat: “Keeping in mind that parts of their story may be self-serving…”
Ya think!!!?
This is a kid who had cops at his door what…39 times in the last 7 years!!!??? A kid who had casual acquaintances calling the FBI about him!!! Read how he had been reported from 2010 to 2017 here.
What I want to know is this…how much were these two people (Both of whom “…grew up around guns and are comfortable with them.”) being paid to put him up? And by whom?
Nasty business all around.
AG
P.S. The F.B.I…that currently oh so trusted national police force…hadn’t the wherewithal to check this dude down. Probably too busy with higher, more important affairs like protecting their position in the DC swamp to be able to allocate competent resources for yet another (Yawn!!!) potential mass murderer.
The system’s broken, up and down the line. Short of some sort of miracle, it’s going to break down even worse in the months to come.
Enjoy.
All supporters of all mainstream political persuasions are responsible for this breakdown. Both parties are criminal enterprises, and the United States is now a total kleptocracy that deserves the president it received.
Great work, folks!!!
Thanks.
while I find parts of this comment obnoxious, it should not be troll-rated.
as for the substance, I don’t think they would have hosted this kid if they were told that the police came to his house dozens of times while his mother was still alive. If they knew that, well, I guess they are some truly foolish people.
what they were probably told was a sob story that was legitimately sad. he followed their rules, as far as they knew. he seemed to like their pets. he wasn’t disrespectful. kid went to bed at 8pm.
The parents should certainly have been fully informed about the kid’s background; there can be no defense for allowing them to take into their house someone who could, from the outset, have been legitimately considered a real threat to them, let alone to others.
That said, it seems as if they did not benefit from the obvious lesson of Sandy Hook: do not let young people with serious behavioral issues living under your roof have access to guns. They distrusted him enough to ensure that his guns were locked up; why did they then trust him enough to allow him access to the weaponry at all? As other commenters have suggested, the safest choice — for him and for themselves, let alone for others — would have been to make their house a gun-free zone. They decided otherwise — and hundreds of other people have suffered terribly from their bad judgment. If as a result “they can’t possibly feel comfortable in their community ever again,” that seems like a justifiable community reaction. They after all survived their mistake; seventeen others didn’t.
I saw on the news this morning, he had ten rifles. The point is you can never be certain you know everything about a person.
What you seem to be saying is no good deed can go unpunished. I agree they were unwise, but then again I don’t know how much they really knew of him. And perhaps they wanted to help a young person whom they thought needed a little of it.
I mentioned above that a student in her speech about this incident said they all knew about him since middle school and apparently the local community did as well. Yet no one could stop it. The problem here seems to be what would you do? Who would do it and what facilities and laws exist to do any of it?
We allow guns, really nasty ones that can be made into automatics for anyone to purchase with little to no restrictions. What would you expect?
I support these people for taking him in; that was a noble and generous thing to do. And I’m pretty familiar with the very limited and restricted public resources for dealing with this kind of problem; my wife is a clinical psychologist who spent many years in public mental health, both in California and on the East Coast. No legally allowable intervention by public authorities could have prevented these tragic events; indeed, only five states allow even temporary confiscation of firearms from the mentally ill. That, to my mind, is all the more reason for families to act on their own. The basic point was made a few months ago by David Frum in an article on “The Atlantic” website: “Gun safety begins, then, not with technical fixes, but with spreading the truthful information: people who bring guns into their homes are endangering themselves and their loved ones.” That concept is even more forceful with regard to disturbed people and firearms — a very dangerous mix.
You should move to Florida and complain full time.
I have known a few killers in my lifetime. Kids. I can assure you that it is not difficult to know who has the potential to be a killer. But what to do about it is very difficult until some act is actually taken.
There are group homes, institutions for the emotionally unstable, therapists, etc. Identified kids are often brought into family court and some set of programs are provided to avoid the cost of “placement.” Murders can happen during that time.
Kids who emerge from placement, who have “done their time,” are urged to return home. The family situations may never have been stable. Now the kids are stigmatized. Their concept of themselves is that they are “bad guys” (or girls). People in communities (including schools) are wary of them. And the kids often live up to their reputations. So even after “treatment,” murders can happen.
Not to psychoanalyze, but this was a kid who was rejected from his first breath. He was weird, by all accounts, and that alienated him further. I think I read that he was sent to a special school for emotionally disturbed kids before returning to the regular high school. This could be hundreds of thousands of kids.
I would gather that the Sneads were doing the best they could and I don’t fault them. Where else was this 18 year old to go? He was in therapy for a while. Why should we expect more of the Sneads that the therapist, or the school psychologist, or anyone else who knew him? And as for the FBI, the issue is not for them but for the local police. If folks were calling the FBI, they should have been rerouted. This only an issue with the FBI now because of Trump.
Certainly, Trump despicably, predictably latched onto it as diversion from and cover for his own high crimes and misdemeanors, as he always does with anything amenable to that purpose.
But my immediate and unequivocal reaction on reading the headline that the FBI had received tips in advance of the shooting and not followed up on them was “Wow!”, followed by reading the lede to co-workers (who had similar reactions).
The FBI fucked up, bigly, and publicly admitted as much.
This would be an issue regardless of Trump’s disgusting attempt to co-opt it in his defense (by asserting baselessly that they were distracted by investigating his conspiracy in collusion with Russia; prediction: no evidence [e.g., documentation that resources were diverted to the Russia investigation that would otherwise have been available and used to follow up on the Cruz tips] will ever be forthcoming that supports Trump’s self-serving assertion in any way, whatsoever).
Sadly, (though it may sound trite, even unfeeling in the present context) these things do happen (reminds of the advance tips re: 9/11 hijackers taking flight training that were not connected until too late) — and will continue to happen. The best that could be hoped for would be effective measures to decrease their frequency and severity. But they can’t be eliminated, short of our Robot Overlords completing their takeover and eliminating human control of anything, anywhere, ever.
They happen and will happen not, contra ag’s persistent idiocy, from enacting some nefarious, DaVinci-Code, “Deep State” conspiracy, though. No, the Ockham’s Razor explanation, though mundane, seems quite adequate: The FBI is a large, institutional bureaucracy comprised of humans. Humans are universally fallible. All of us. We fuck up. Attentions lapse at critical junctures. Trivial-seeming facts turn out to be critical. Institutional procedures prove inadequate. An incoming-nuclear-missile-attack alert is published as “not a test”. Etc., etc., etc.
I would need to know more about these people before giving them a break. They might deserve it, they might not.
I remember after Columbine everyone went after the parents. “How could they have not known?” was heard a lot. But I remember being in high school, and I remember we could get away with a lot. And we had good parents, attentive parents. But, I mean, we got away with a lot.
. . . given what’s known to me (i.e., what booman cited), is yes, give them a break unless and until further information’s revealed showing they don’t merit it.
But from what’s known so far, they seem like good samaritans trying to do the right thing, at worst a bit naive (or maybe more than a bit, if you like; though as anegadino[?] notes this thread: high school kids — especially devious high school kids — can hide and get away with a lot, even with attentive parents). And giving them “the” key to the locked gun cabinet they’d insisted on, holding back another key they didn’t know about, and making a show of asking permission and getting the key from them to use a gun (assuming that’s all true/confirmed) certainly qualifies as devious.
The key bit is extremely typical teenage behavior.
A friend with a typical teenage girl was spending too much time on her phone at night so they grounded her phone at 9pm – she had to turn it off and leave it on the kitchen counter. Some complaining at first but then she accepts it. 9pm comes phone gets turned off and goes on the counter.
Several months pass by, Dad’s phone is dead but he has to make some late night phone calls. Bingo! He can use daughters’s phone. Goes to kitchen, turns on phone `No Service’ – daughter has been taking the SIMM card out and putting it in her previous phone and completely ignoring parents curfew.
Phone then confiscated altogether.
The only thing I’d say that’s questionable is how is the kid around guns at all? In therapy after the deaths in his family, already strange, why wasn’t he viewed as a suicide risk, never mind mass murder risk. Same thing at Newtown.
While this is true I can tell you that if my father had found out that I had bought an assault rifle he would have handed me my head. Its ridiculous that American parents allow their kids to buy, own, and operate weaponry; much less the govt..
Ah, all the “armchair shrinks” here and about (not you Martin) that, unlike many parents/caregivers, teachers/school administrators, and law enforcement, can identify future mass killers because they have their handy-dandy, fictional mass killer checklist. Don’t even seem to wonder why all parents/caregivers, teachers, etc. don’t use that checklist. (Hint: the numbers of false positives would be enormous.) Or doubt that if they’d been around Cruz that they too would have failed. Much less have a clue as to an effective intervention.
Very disturbing to see how far and wide the NRA position has been internalized by Americans — almost all of whom at one time or another aren’t mentally healthy, but very few of whom kill other people and even fewer of whom commit mass murder (including familicide). It’s the guns, stupid. Guns in a culture that exalts in violence to resolve personal and national “problems.”
The Sneads do sound as if they’re kinder and more generous than the average person. Unfortunately and like most, they accept that only those that display serious mental illness that they can detect will kill.
Look at monsters whooping it up with the monster-in-chief at an Orphan’s charity* event last night. (Hours after shedding their crocodile tears for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School victims.) Not that Trump’s pose (big grin and thumbs up) at the FL hospital was any different and even more inappropriate, but are most of the other people there matching his stupid grin?
btw – Cruz and his younger brother (both apparently relinquished at birth by the biological mother) are orphans.
. . . shrinks” here . . . ‘ doing what you claim ‘all the “armchair shrinks” here and about’ are doing?
Cuz, ya know, I can’t think of a single one I’ve noticed here doing any of that. Granted, it coulda happened and I coulda just missed it.
So enlighten me.
No one with authority, family, school, local PD, or the state child services, ever did anything to deny this kid his 2nd amendment rights. That is a part of our culture now. It is way to complicated a process to take away guns from someone who has not committed a serious crime.
Thus, that is why it is time to go after the military assault gun. There is no reason for civilians to have guns that the military requires at least 10 weeks of training before they allow soldiers to defend the country with it.
. . . These are not “military assault gun[s]”, for which “the military requires at least 10 weeks of training before they allow soldiers to defend the country with [them].” Those are fully automatic. These are only semi-automatic.
This is a distinction gun-nuts cling to and trot out as though it’s the most important thing in the world. More importantly, your carelessness in not making that distinction shows your ignorance about guns and thus that nothing you have to say about guns has any merit or value. It’s how they cavalierly dismiss your entirely legitimate argument. Yes, this is stupid and dishonest. It is also what they routinely do.
In terms of simply the number of rounds that can be fired with a single trigger-pull — and hence of rounds-per-minute that can be fired — this is a significant distinction.
In the practical terms of potential for human carnage, however, its significance declines towards zero as a limit, and — as the Las Vegas mass-murderer showed — add a (still-legal, to my knowledge) “bump stock” and the distinction in the potential for human carnage declines to insignificance.
Gun nuts will attack you regardless. You don’t need to have a detailed knowledge of guns to have an opinion on them. These are weapons that can slaughter dozens of people very efficiently in a civilian environment. Their repeated use in shootings like this is all the evidence needed.
Just because they aren’t “military grade” doesn’t refute that point. He wasn’t on a battlefield. He was in a school.
. . . arguing with me. As I said up front I was just channeling the bullshit they routinely hide behind.)
But why give them that — or any — straw to grasp as a “basis” for their attacks?
No. I’m just making a slightly different point. Gun nuts will grab any straw, and most people are ignorant about the difference between automatic and semi-automatic weapons. Because they’re ignorant, they make mistakes. It’s unavoidable.
The fact is, these shooters pick these guns in part because they look like military weapons and they’re just as effective when you don’t have to worry about return fire. I doubt the kids who were under fire cared about the distinction.
See the article in today’s NYT on Connecticut’s gun laws.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/nyregion/florida-shooting-parkland-gun-control-connecticut.html?
“Connecticut is also one of a few states with another gun law with some teeth — an ‘extreme risk protection order.’ Akin to a restraining order for domestic violence victims, the protection order, which predates Sandy Hook, gives the police the power to temporarily take away an individual’s guns if a person makes threats, acts violently, abuses drugs or commits animal cruelty.”
. . . In the good ol’ USofA? Despite our 2nd Amendment Holy Writ?
How can this be?
Let’s follow the lead of the Parkland survivors’ Children’s Crusade, and support them in making this a national model and the law of the land. Perhaps the kids can yet save us from ourselves. Perhaps if they succeed here, they can move on to climate/population-driven ecological collapse. One can dream.
. . . ourselves . . . maybe, just maybe, they might actually pull it off.
Just watched this (“Emma Gonzalez, a student at the Parkland, Florida high school where 17 people were left dead after a mass shooting, calls out President Trump and the NRA by name at an anti-gun rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida”), courtesy digby. If you haven’t already seen it, you should. Click the link.
(Should we start a betting pool on how long before Trump starts attacking her on Twitter?)
What struck me and gave me faint hope: She’s fearless. And angry. And calling out “BS” by name. Also too, Trump and Grassley. Not hiding behind any politician’s fear about offending potential donors or voters.
Maybe they can really pull it off — shame us into the meaningful action that we adults have been unable to accomplish even in the face of our child-massacre-of-the-week recent history.
It’s sad that we are at a point in our history where we are actually contemplating a presumed president dissing a teenager on Twitter. And yet we’re here. It’s that plausible.
I’m with you…let’s hope our youth can shame those needing shaming into actually doing something useful for once and stopping what has become an epidemic of school shootings.
It really wasn’t that many years ago when we took for granted that we could go to school without wondering if we and our classmates would survive the day. No kid should have to live like that.
. . . if he didn’t attack her on Twitter.
Unless, of course, they don’t first trash her on “Fox & Friends” or Hannity. In which case, he’ll never know to do so himself on Twitter.
Safest of all would be to put her statements into the national-security Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB). Then for sure he’d never become aware of them.
What I want to know is what would people have liked the FBI to do? As far as I can tell, he didn’t break any laws until he set foot on that campus and fired the gun
As I tried to suggest above, the FBI should have sent the people to the local agency or the local police. You’re right, no crime was committed prior to this one. An important question is what did the local police do when they were summoned many time to the home of a teen whose mother found him to be out of control? Were courts involved? Social services (whatever they are called in Florida). This would be the normal procedure.
Is that what’s usually done?
I just got this whiff of “Minority Report” out of this whole mini-scandal.
I’m not sure what to say beyond this – I would like to know what’s customary and how this tip line works, tho.
is it normal procedure in FL though? 🙂
As far as I can tell, though, “nothing” seems to answer what they did do. Which does not seem adequate (understatement).
Authoritarian Trump’s implication is, of course, “lock her[/him/them all — but not me!] up!” Obviously unacceptable, diversionary, and demanding the most robust resistance possible.
they say they screwed up the response but even if they didn’t there doesn’t seem like there are any legal steps they could have taken to prevent this
Cruz had a handful of guns, including the AR-15 and two other rifles that Snead said would be considered assault rifles.
This country has gone so far off the rails that a troubled teenager owning an arsenal that would make a mercenary soldier proud doesn’t even make a blip on people’s radar.
Agreed. I’m sure this couple were trying to help a boy in need. However, when you offer shelter to a teenaged orphan who is “extremely depressed about his mother’s death” it’s perfectly reasonable to have him store his small arsenal of deadly weapons far away from easy access.
Guns and depression are a bad combination, even for a person who hasn’t been repeatedly visited by the police responding to 911 calls.
A friend of mine who is a psychotherapist routinely recommends to parents and guardians of depressed teens to remove all firearms from the house. Not just lock them up. Actually physically move them into storage. My friend is an avid firearms enthusiast otherwise, but clearly sees the danger – usually suicide is the concern.
When I was a teenager, I had a close friend who suffered severe depression. He also had a fascination with guns and weapons of all types, and believed the second amendment entitled Americans to own any weapon, including rocket launchers and tanks. He attempted suicide several times, with pills and knives. Fortunately, we lived in a state with strong gun laws and he had no access to them. Otherwise, I’m sure that he and the rest of his family would be dead now.
We continue to draw the limits of analysis too tightly and too immediate.
Why were there not major school shootings in the 1950s, when I was growing up, or in the 1960s and 1970s? Sure the NRA metastasized gun ownership and its association with right-wing politics beginning in the 1970s. But what else has changed? Especially after the ramp-up in mental health services and support services in schools?
The government started backing out of all of these support services. Segregation returned, enforcing a more complicated class structure on public schools than has often been noticed.
Cultural artifacts started feeding back the trauma of school shootings back into the culture.
Gun manufacturers started seeing the post-shooting sales of guns as a good thing.
The Vietnam War retreat from JROTC programs was reversed as America “learned patriotism” again.
Local news media coalesced into intra-global local news. Campus violence no longer became news no further than the county line.
Might be worth time to go back and review the parents and guardians of the Columbine shooters, or others in other shootings. Or Dylann Roof’s parents?
The person with a finger on the trigger still has ultimate responsibility. Why are there growing numbers of these people?
You can expect some preachers to start preaching that it’s because of gay marriage, about how the Roman empire collapsed from immorality from within. But then, I understand there is shift in how certain evangelicals are framing these issues after Trump.
A rush to judgment about the adults and caretakers involved does tend to leave no good deed unpunished.
There is also the possibility of a gradual then more rapid deterioriation of (what shall we call it?) impulse and judgment over the recent past in this young man’s life. Are those mental breaks also increasing in frequency and seriousness over the past 50 years? Has anyone studied these trend questions?
Tarheel. As usual, an interesting perspective and historical assessment. I’d like to point out a few things: 19 (ish) is a very vulnerable age and is frequently connected to onset of schizophrenia. The diagnoses given Cruz early on, like Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Autism (somewhere on a scale) are not atypical for youngsters. Keeps them in the system and receiving some services without branding them forever. Might also be an impetus (or excuse) for meds.
But the providers within the mental health system failed here. The school sent him away. They have 3000 students there? How many psychologists and social workers? How much funding for those services has been cut by Rick Scott et al? How qualified are the people?
Then there was a trauma in this young man’s life that seems to have tipped a scale, ie., his mother’s death from pneumonia (pretty unusual, I’d say).
As for the adults, from what I can tell, they were overwhelmed by the behaviors. But the behaviors never rose to the level that would have mandated institutionalization. I’d imagine that these folks who took this kid in (and their son, too) felt they were doing a good deed, as they were, as were the Cruz’s who adopted these two unwanted boys as infants. And I’d imagine they were optimistic that they were being of some help. Thus, the surprise.
On the historical note, there has been (from your youth time and mine (I’d imagine) a push and pull regarding schools role in loco parentis. In the 70’s schools were providing therapy, “rap groups,” and so on for identified or self-selected groups of kids. The idea of that happening now in public schools seems anathema. School psychologists administer tests but don’t treat. Parents aren’t engaged with their public schools, generally speaking for an assortment of reasons which now include background checks. Meanwhile, kids are more anxious about a lot of things: grades, bullying, romantic relationships, family conflict, the divisions in the country, the environment, and so much more about their futures. Who is out there to help them through?
None of this is intended to disagree with your points. They are real too. I guess I just needed to write my thoughts here since this is a topic I have personally dealt with on several occasions, sad to say.
Exactly my point:
We have surrendered control of our schools to the politicians who cut the taxes and the spending. We expect parents to pay out of pocket for services that used to be provided by school staff. In so many ways, the politicians have decided that we will get these outcomes and are now pushing those decisions harder. It is not hard to see those who seek the destruction of all public schools just because in 1954 the Supreme Court decided that public schools should be desegregated. While the pressures for resegregation play in the background, it is the defunding of services and the increase in pressures on the institution from politicians that have caused the flight of some very talented staff and the lack of replacements.
Even as we as a society have learned more about how to treat various mental conditions.
I can’t disagree with any of that. But more services or facilities cost money, tax dollars. These days that is a tough haul. In days past when all the productivity gains were not going to the top, it may have been possible, but not so much in most places today.
What we can do is get more serious about guns, like banning assault rifles and background checks and prohibitions to some, etc.
I wish the Czar of Executive Orders would just issue one that bans assault weapons, or raises the age nationwide to 21, or imposes stricter background checks. SOMETHING. Let the NRA spend its money going to court to stop it, as the ACLU has had to do with so many Executive Orders. If Trump knows he has the power to do that, it might just appeal to him. Who knows? But it sure seems like it’s time to put the NRA on the defensive.