Trump Promises To Make Ending Gun Free Zones A Priority If Elected

Lefty Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent heard Donald Trump’s latest proposal on gun rights last night, and promptly had an aneurysm:

Even as President Obama was holding a CNN town hall last night calling for gun reforms, Donald Trump — the man who hopes to succeed him in the White House — was promising a crowd at a Vermont rally that he would end gun free zones at schools.

Make no mistake, this is another very important Trumpian moment. It raises the bar once again for Trump’s GOP rivals for the nomination.

That’s because, if you take Trump’s words at face value, he is not simply proposing to repeal the federal law that created gun free zones at schools. His comments suggest he would also make it illegal for states to pass their own laws outlawing guns in school zones if they so choose.

“You know what a gun free zone is to sickos? That’s bait!” Trump said. He continued:

“I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and — you have to — and on military bases. My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”

The key there is “no more gun free zones.” Current federal law makes it unlawful for anyone to knowingly possess a firearm in an area that he or she knows or has reasonable cause to believe is a school zone. There are some exemptions — the law, for instance, allows states to exempt people with state concealed carry permits, and some states have done this. Meanwhile, a number of states have passed their own laws containing various restrictions on guns in schools and colleges.

But taking Trump’s words at their plain meaning — “no more gun free zones” — he would not only repeal the federal law, but he also would apparently preclude states from setting their own policies when it comes to guns on school grounds, according to Arkadi Gerney, an expert on gun law at the Center for American Progress.

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Sargent and his fellow left-wing extremist Gerney might want to lay off the medicinal “whatever” they’ve been inhaling, snorting, or injecting.

Here’s Trump in his own words.

Trump is very clearly focusing the bulk of his comments on what many view as an absurd policy of not allowing military service personnel to carry weapons on military bases. Though he mentioned five soldiers, Trump was obviously making a reference to the four Marines and a sailor killed in the Islamic terrorist attacks in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Trump’s brief reference to schools seemed almost an afterthought. It wasn’t even a complete throw-away line, but a mid-sentence interjection.  It was clearly not any sort of comprehensive policy statement, much one that was calculated the set off a debate on the limits of federal, state and local laws as Sargent and Gerney dishonestly assert.

Time and again people have accused the mainstream media of taking things grossly out of context in order to misrepresent the views of right-leaning candidates. This appears to be yet another shameless example of that sort of overt partisanship.

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