President Trump appears to have backed away from his request that Congress raise the minimum purchasing age for semi-automatic guns to 21, suggesting it would be better to let individual states decide.
“Conceptually, he still supports raising the age to 21. But he also knows there’s not a lot of broad support for that. I think he thinks it would probably have more potential in the states than it would at the federal level,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Friday morning, hours after Trump dined with National Rifle Association executives at the White House.
During a Wednesday meeting with bipartisan lawmakers, Trump urged Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to add a measure to the background check proposal that would restrict Americans under the age of 21 from buying firearms. The president first embraced the idea after learning that 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz used his own AR-15 to gun down 17 of his former classmates and teachers at a Florida high school earlier this month.
“You have a case right now where somebody can buy a handgun at 21. You can’t buy a handgun … but you can buy the kind of weapons used in the school shooting at 18,” Trump had said, telling the roomful of lawmakers, “The people in this room … are going to decide” whether such a change occurs.
When Toomey informed the president that his and Manchin’s bill did not address the purchasing age for firearms, Trump suggested they were “afraid of the NRA.”
“I think if we’re going to use you as a base, the two of you, I think you’re going to have to iron out that problem,” Trump later said, suggesting the Toomey-Manchin bill could be used as a foundation for gun-related legislation on Capitol Hill.
Despite the NRA’s opposition to changing the minimum purchasing age, Trump has repeatedly said he supports the move. Ahead of their dinner meeting Thursday, the nation’s largest pro-gun group said the White House meeting on guns “made for great TV [but] the gun-control proposals discussed would make for bad policy that would not keep our children safe.”
Meanwhile, private companies like Walmart and Dick’s Sporting Goods have unveiled new policies at their stores involving the age at which customers can purchase firearms and which types of guns are sold.
