With two months left in the presidential race, former president Donald Trump would prefer to campaign on issues such as inflation and immigration. Vice President Kamala Harris has been centering her campaign on expanding economic opportunity, while seeking to keep abortion rights as a top contrast with Trump.<\/p>\n
But a school shooting in the battleground state of Georgia has thrust the issue of gun violence back into the spotlight, elevating \u2014 at least for now \u2014 a topic that had not been front and center in the matchup.<\/p>\n
The immediate political reaction was familiar, signaling dim prospects for any near-term changes to gun laws. But advocates against gun violence said the proximity to the election could focus candidates and voters more urgently on the issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think in some ways it is a familiar reaction, but also in some ways there\u2019s a lot of differences,\u201d said Monisha Henley, senior vice president of government affairs at Everytown for Gun Safety, which has endorsed Harris. \u201cWe are in a presidential election, so that is an immediate difference. Voters are making their decisions right now on who they think will best represent them up and down the ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henley also pointed to the state level, saying she was encouraged by a bipartisan Georgia legislative committee that met Thursday morning to consider gun storage initiatives. The meeting was previously scheduled.<\/p>\n
In the hours after Wednesday\u2019s shooting, which killed four people and injured at least nine others, Democrats lamented the regularity of such tragedies and called for new gun restrictions. Republicans focused on portraying the shooting as an act of evil and sidestepped \u2014 or outright rejected \u2014 questions about policy.<\/p>\n
Harris was campaigning in New Hampshire hours after the shooting and began her event by addressing it, at one point telling the crowd she was \u201cgoing off-script\u201d to speak further about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur kids are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential and some part of their big, beautiful brain is concerned about a shooter busting through the door of their classroom. It does not have to be this way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is one of the many issues that is at stake in this election,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
President Joe Biden, in a statement on the shooting, called on Republicans in Congress to \u201cfinally say \u2018enough is enough\u2019\u201d and work with Democrats to pass a list of proposals, including an assault-weapons ban. Officials have said the gunman used an \u201cAR-platform-style weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s initial comments on the shooting did not mention gun violence. In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump referred to the shooting as a \u201ctragic event\u201d and said the victims were \u201ctaken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster\u201d \u2014 a reference to the 14-year-old suspect.<\/p>\n
Trump also did not mention gun violence when asked about the shooting during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired Wednesday night. Trump instead used a question about the shooting to reiterate his broader campaign message that he is the best candidate to restore peace at home and abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a sick and angry world for a lot of reasons and we\u2019re going to make it better,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to heal our world.\u201d<\/p>\n
The shooting has come at a time when violent crime has declined nationally, a fact that Democrats have highlighted as Trump portrays Biden and Harris as soft on criminals.<\/p>\n
Georgia\u2019s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, declined to entertain a reporter\u2019s question at a news conference about the possible policy response to the shooting. Kemp said Georgia has \u201cdone a tremendous amount on school safety, but today is not the day for politics or policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kemp is a crucial ally for Trump in Georgia. Trump has recently sought to patch up his relationship with Kemp after a long-running feud sparked by Kemp\u2019s refusal to help with overturning Trump\u2019s 2020 reelection loss in Georgia.<\/p>\n
The state looms large in the November election, especially since Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee. In The Washington Post\u2019s polling average across seven battleground states, Georgia has seen the second-largest shift away from Trump since Biden ended his reelection bid in July.<\/p>\n
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, went on a bus tour of south Georgia last week, looking to show their commitment to contesting smaller communities outside the vote-rich Atlanta area.<\/p>\n
It remains to be seen whether Wednesday\u2019s shooting will change how the state\u2019s voters think about gun violence in regard to the November election.<\/p>\n
A Quinnipiac University poll of Georgia, conducted from May 30 to June 3, found only 4 percent voters said gun violence was the most important issue in deciding who they will vote for in the presidential contest. That issue was far behind the economy (29 percent) and \u201cpreserving democracy\u201d (23 percent).<\/p>\n
Aneesa McMillan, a spokeswoman for the gun-control group Giffords, which has also endorsed Harris, said she sees plenty of \u201cpolitical momentum\u201d for the cause in polling that the organization has conducted among battleground state voters. She said it is a \u201ctop-of-mind issue that is consistently brought up\u201d by certain voting blocs, including young voters who have \u201ccome of age\u201d doing school shooting drills in the classroom.<\/p>\n
Both Harris and Trump have extensive records on gun violence.<\/p>\n
In 2022, Biden signed into law a bipartisan gun-control measure that was the most significant law of its kind in the past three decades. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act provided funding for mental health services and school security initiatives, while expanding criminal background checks for some gun buyers, among other things.<\/p>\n
Harris oversees the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, an appointment that Biden gave her about a year ago. At her first campaign event after Biden dropped out, Harris reiterated her support for \u201cred flag laws, universal background checks and an assault weapons ban.\u201d<\/p>\n
In picking Walz \u2014 a veteran and hunter \u2014 Harris found a running mate who could tap into personal experience to address gun violence. Walz, in his Democratic National Convention speech, said he \u201cknow[s] guns.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI was a better shot than most Republicans in Congress and I got the trophies to prove it,\u201d Walz said. \u201cBut I\u2019m also a dad. I believe in the Second Amendment. But I also believe our first responsibility is to keep our kids safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump, meanwhile, has pitched himself as \u201cthe best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House\u201d and repeatedly courted the National Rifle Association. Addressing the NRA this year, Trump boasted that as president he resisted \u201cgreat pressure\u201d to change gun laws.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe did nothing,\u201d Trump said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t yield.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a January school shooting in Iowa, Trump called it a \u201cvery terrible thing\u201d but added, \u201cwe have to get over it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With two months left in the presidential race, former president Donald Trump would prefer to campaign on issues such as inflation and immigration. Vice President Kamala Harris has been centering her campaign on expanding economic opportunity, while seeking to keep abortion rights as a top contrast with Trump. But a school shooting in the battleground […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}