Christian Schwarz
Antelope Staff
A little over a week has passed since a madman plowed through a bike lane in Lower Manhattan on Halloween, killing eight and wounding 11 more.
Of course, the Manhattan attack had ISIS’ footprints all over it and not even two hours after the attack had been reported, Trump was quick to respond despite the fact that no information about the attacker had been reported.
Not even 24 hours had passed before Trump was all over what we had to do to make immigration even harder than it already is.
He quickly criticized the law that allowed the attacker to immigrate to America, and demanded that the attacker get the death penalty, effectively making it that much more difficult for the justice system to do so.
This response is in sharp contrast to the Las Vegas shooting, almost a month prior to the attack. The attack occurred on Oct. 1, around 10 p.m. when a lone gunman killed 58 and wounded 546 more. The first tweet from the president occurred at around 6 a.m. the next morning.
Of course, time zones may have prevented him tweeting out as fast as he did with this most recent attack, but I’m not willing to give him a pass on that.
When Trump tweeted after the Vegas shooting, it was not one of condemnation of the shooter or one of policy changes to make sure attacks like this did not happen again as contrasted to his tweets after the Manhattan attack.
No, these tweets were ones of thoughts and prayers. No policy changes, no nothing.
It’s interesting that when the deadliest shooting in American history happens, we were not allowed to talk gun control, but when an ISIS attack happens we jump to policy within an hour first before any thoughts and prayers are issued to the victims.
There are a couple of reasons why Trump did not order such policy changes after the shooting as he is doing right now.
First, the Las Vegas shooter was white. A high percentage of mass killers in America are white, but only the attacks where the attacker is Muslim fall under Trump’s radar.
Second, the Las Vegas shooter was just that: a shooter. He used guns to kill his victims, whereas the Manhattan attacker used a tried and true ISIS formula of using a vehicle to plow victims as the main weapon. Can you say gun lobby?
Because Trump is a self-described “defender of the Second Amendment,” he would not dare touch any policy like that, despite the fact that guns are used more in attacks and do way more damage.
The number of mass shooters in the past years far outweigh the number of ISIS terrorists.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t talk immigration policy change. Trump is right that the law that allowed the attacker in the country is an outdated one.
However, gun control should happen as well. Don’t take away guns, but make it harder to get them.
It makes one wonder how many people must get shot and killed in a mass shooting before this administration is willing to even think about gun control.
