Folks, every time you think it couldn’t get worse, it does. Take the proposal tweeted out by Trump for gun control legislation:
Republicans and Democrats must come together and get strong background checks, perhaps marrying his legislation with desperately needed immigration reform
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/08/05/mass-shooting-trump-suggests-linking-gun-control-immigration-laws/1919672001/
But note:
his proposal to link new gun control measures with immigration restrictions is likely to leave Democrats sternly opposed.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/us/politics/trump-speech-mass-shootings-dayton-el-paso.html
That means that Trump is saying: unless white Americans stifle immigration and kick out brown immigrants, white Americans will continue to need guns to repel the invasion from Mexico.
Again: Trump is implicitly saying that white Americans must stop brown immigration, and only then will the white Americans who cannot pass a background check no longer have the need to buy high capacity semi-automatic death weapons to kick out the brown hoards.
Tying immigration limits to gun limits is expressly and explicitly a white supremacist theory. The two have no other relationship with each other. By repetition, Trump is linking immigrants with gun violence, and the need to own assault rifles.
Further, this means that when Congress refuses to pass Trump’s immigration restrictions in tandem with any gun control legislation, Trump’s message will again go out loud and clear: since Congress won’t control immigration, we shouldn’t be controlling guns. The whispered part might even be spoken out loud: white Trump supporters need those guns to kick those brown immigrants (and not just in the Florida panhandle).
The entire concept of linking gun control legislation to immigration restrictions has to be condemned as more white supremacy. It is overtly racist to tie those two together, and allowing such a linkage means validating another subliminal call to violence by the President.
The questions that every Democratic officeholder must ask directly: is Trump saying that without immigration restrictions Americans who can’t pass a background check will need assault rifles? Aren’t you just doing what the El Paso shooter wanted?