By AWR Hawkins
Washington DC – -(Ammoland.com)- Following Donald Trump’s statements that the August 26 2015 shootings of a WDBJ-TV reporter and cameraman were indicative of mental problems rather than a gun problem, “68 percent” of likely voters told Rasmussen they agree with Trump’s assessment.
Breitbart News previously reported that Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that he was “a very strong Second Amendment person” and stressed that guns were not to blame for the heinous attack. Rather, Trump said Virginia gunman Vester Lee Flanagan was a “a very sick man.”
He added, “In the old days, they had mental institutions for people like [Flanagan] because he was really, definitely borderline and definitely would have been and should have been institutionalized.”
Trump argued that pursuing gun control in the wake of something like the Virginia shooting only makes it harder for “sane people” to get guns with which to protect themselves.
According to Rasmussen, “68 percent” of likely voters share Trump’s view of the shooting and nearly as many—two thirds of likely voters—have maintained this view since Adam Lanza stole guns and opened fire on innocents in Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012. Those two thirds of likely voters have consistently said “the best way to prevent incidents like this is to focus more the mentally ill rather than on increased gun control.”
Even apart from any reference to Trump, “60 percent” of likely voters said more gun control is not the answer to violent attacks like the one in Virginia, while less than a third of likely voters— “29 percent”— “believe stricter gun control laws would have prevented the shooting deaths” of Alison Parker and Adam Ward.
Breitbart News previously reported that the White House admitted that gun control being pushed by Obama would not have prevented the shootings.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins.
With the gunman dead from self inflicted gunshot, they can blame the gun
When they put a mentally ill person in prison with no treatment what do they expect. A very large majority of people that are incarnated are let out @ sometime. So since they received no treatment they are worse then when they went in. Most mental illness can be treated by medication or in an institution in more severe cases. So in order to save money they closed down the institutions. It is easier to blame the gun rather then a lousy & corrupt government for these senseless crimes. As long as we have politicians who are more interested in… Read more »
Awesome to see more and more people correctly identify, speak out, and write publicly about the real problem we have. The real problem is that we have a lot of mentally ill people among us, and they are there because of our federal government. When Ronald Reagan relaxed the mental health laws we had protecting us (to save money), he opened a Pandora’s box of evil onto the public. Now we suffer, innocent people are maimed and murdered for no other reason than “cost savings”. But what is the value of one child? So I ask my federal government one… Read more »