The gunman in Sunday’s mass shooting in Odessa, Texas, bought his weapon at a private sale, evading background checks, according to reports from CNN and ABC. That news comes just a day after Donald Trump once again did his yelling-to-reporters-over-helicopter-noise thing, and, asked about gun legislation, claimed, “We’re looking at a lot of different things, we’re looking at a lot of different bills, ideas, concepts” before quickly crapping on the idea of background checks, probably the most popular single proposal out there.
“I will say that for the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five, going back even five or six or seven years—for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it,” Trump said. “So it’s a big problem. It’s a mental problem, it’s a big problem.”
The gunman was legally prohibited from buying firearms, but that prohibition has zero teeth when there are such big loopholes. But since Trump and Republicans don’t want to do even as much as universal background checks, a proposal with support as high as 93%, they have to find creative ways to back away. Of course, since we’re talking about Donald Trump, he’s not even going to acknowledge the mismatch between reality and his claims.