Trump Responds to Two Massacres by Doing the Bare Minimum on Gun Control

It took two mass shootings and the killing of 75 people for Donald Trump to even take the absolute minimum level of action on gun control, but that’s where we are.

On Tuesday, Trump said that he had signed a memo instructing Attorney General Jeff Sessions to ban gun modifications like bump stocks, which effectively turn semi-automatic weapons into fully automatic ones.

Trump’s movement on the issue comes nearly six full months after the mass shooting at Las Vegas, which put such gun modifications in the national spotlight. He claimed that he began exploring a ban on bump stocks in December.

“I expect that these critical regulations will be finalized—Jeff —very soon,” Trump said.

Significantly, Trump’s order offers no legislative path forward on gun control. Nor does it address in any way the school shooting in Parkland, FL, which left 17 dead thanks to the shooter’s use of an AR-15 assault rifle. Maybe he will get to that after the next mass shooting happens.