Yep.
Anyone.
August 5 2019
President Donald Trump responded to the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings by insisting Monday that “mental illness pulls the trigger not the gun,” but shortly after taking office he
quietly rolled back an Obama-era regulation that would have made it harder for people with mental illness to buy guns.
Trump did so without any fanfare. In fact, the news that Trump had signed the bill was at the bottom of a White House email that alerted the media to other legislation signed by the president.
And it came after the House and Senate, both of which were Republican-controlled at the time, passed a bill,
H.J. Res 40, which revoked the Obama-era regulation. The bill was sponsored by Rep. Sam Johnson, a Texas Republican who retired at the end of 2018.
"It has been the NRA’s long-standing position that those who have been adjudicated as a danger to themselves or others should not have access to firearms and should be admitted for treatment," it said.
But two years ago, the NRA insisted the Obama rule infringed on Second Amendment rights to buy guns, even though the regulation specifically targeted people who were diagnosed with mental illness.
Everyone.
One of the omnipresent responses after every new mass shooting is conservative claims that what we need is even more guns in even more places. The circumstances of each shooting don't matter a bit, and the "more guns" response is wheeled out even before the first bodies have gone cold.
But when lawmakers have reconvened in Austin in the months after a mass shooting, those same leaders tend to fall silent on any restrictive measures when it comes to guns. In the last two legislative sessions, Texas legislators have loosened gun laws, most notably by passing permitless carry in 2021, less than two years after
mass shootings in El Paso and Odessa took the lives of 30 people.