What Trump Did (and Undid) on School Shootings
The “MAGA Minute" sent me digging. Here's what I found about Trump, the GOP, and school shootings.
Last week, Karoline Leavitt delivered what she called a “MAGA Minute,” and it pissed me right off. She acknowledged the horrific shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis with the usual boilerplate stuff (flags at half staff, thoughts and prayers for the victims, unimaginable grief, etc.) and it drove me nuts. Thoughts and prayers is certainly not enough - especially when it comes from the party who seems to be doing all they can to not handle gun violence. I genuinely believe the Republican Party treats gun violence like a line to deliver and something to brush past, rather than a crisis to solve.
And then I saw CNN’s reporting that Trump’s DOJ is weighing ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns in response to the Minneapolis church shooting. This is an idea officials are “preliminarily” discussing by trying to reclassify gender dysphoria as a disqualifying mental illness for Second Amendment rights. The fact that they want to target an entire group rather than tackling easy access to guns only deepened my resolve to scrutinize Trump’s record on gun violence.
So I did what I do when I’m mad, and decided to dig into the GOP’s record. Specifically Trump’s. This isn’t just about one crappy clip on Instagram. From Trump’s first term (2017–2021) through today, a clear pattern emerges: preserving unfettered gun rights at the expense of school safety and children’s lives. The evidence is damning.
Trump’s very first year in office set the tone. In February 2017, with Republican control of Congress, Trump repealed an Obama-era regulation intended to keep guns away from about 75,000 people with serious “mental impairments” (as identified by Social Security) to the background check system, potentially blocking them from buying firearms. But Trump quietly signed its repeal. And by doing so, he ended a safeguard before it could take effect.
This move was downplayed by the White House, even as Trump later frequently blamed “mental illness” for mass shootings while removing a tool that might have prevented some of those individuals suffering from mental illness from obtaining guns.
In the wake of the tragic February 2018 Parkland school shooting, Trump formed a Federal Commission on School Safety – yet its focus steered away from gun control. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who chaired the commission, explicitly said they “wouldn’t be dealing with guns.”
The commission’s final report “took a pass” on recommending any new gun restrictions or age limits for firearm purchases, even though Trump initially mused about raising the rifle purchasing age. The report argued that “available research does not support” age limits since many school shooters obtain guns from family or friends – a conclusion critics saw as a predetermined excuse to avoid gun control.
Instead, the commission urged states to adopt “extreme risk protection orders” (also known as red-flag laws) as a voluntary measure while encouraging the arming of school staff. It suggested schools consider hiring armed personnel – including trained teachers, veterans, and retired police – and even noted that federal grants could potentially be used to arm and train staff. DeVos’s department signaled it might allow certain education funds to be spent on firearms for teachers - a notion so alarming that it sparked public outcry and congressional efforts to block it.
Meanwhile, the commission also rescinded Obama-era policies that it scapegoated for school violence. Notably, it recommended scrapping the 2014 school discipline guidance meant to curb racial disparities in suspensions. The rationale – that lenient discipline policies made schools unsafe – was tenuous.
Civil rights advocates noted this rollback had little to do with preventing school shootings and more to do with reversing equity measures. In the end, the commission’s recommendations heavily emphasized “hardening” schools (single entry points, metal detectors, surveillance) and improving mental health – but provided no new federal funding for those initiatives. “The commission has chosen to ‘pass the buck’ to states,” one school administrators’ leader lamented.
In Congress, Republican lawmakers echoed this pattern of resistance. After high-profile massacres like Parkland (2018) and Santa Fe (2018), GOP leaders blocked substantive gun reforms. Even modest measures with broad public support (universal background checks, assault-weapons bans, and federal “red flag” laws) have been repeatedly stonewalled by Republicans in Congress.
In 2019, a bipartisan House bill to expand background checks languished without a Senate vote, as the Trump White House signaled no strong support. Following the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, when 20 first-graders were killed, it was primarily Republicans (joined by a few Democrats) who filibustered stronger background check legislation in 2013.
This obstruction has continued into the present. In late 2023, 216 House Republicans voted to prohibit the CDC from funding research into gun violence, effectively trying to revive the 1990s-era ban on studying gun deaths as a public health issues.
Such moves demonstrate a long-running aversion to evidence-based gun policy, tracing back to the 1996 “Dickey Amendment,” inserted by GOP lawmakers, which chilled federal research on gun violence for over two decades.
Trump’s own legislative record on guns was scant – something he later bragged about. At an NRA forum, he proudly recounted that during his term “nothing happened” on gun control: “We did nothing. We didn’t yield,” Trump boasted, describing how he withstood “great pressure” after mass shootings and refused to tighten laws. (He warned that “once you yield a little bit… the avalanche begins.”)
Indeed, the only notable gun restriction Trump approved was a ban on bump stocks (devices that simulate automatic fire) after the 2017 Las Vegas shooting – a rare step that his administration then undermined in 2025.
By contrast, Trump delivered far more for the gun lobby. This pattern of talking about safety but walking back any gun regulation was so pronounced that Trump openly touted his “great relationship” with the NRA and promised them, “no one will ever lay a finger on your firearms” if he was re-elected.
While blocking gun reforms in practice, Trump and many Republicans have relied on rhetoric that downplays the role of firearms in school massacres. Time and again, their public statements shift blame to other factors – or even suggest Americans must simply endure these tragedies.
After a mass shooting at a Texas church in November 2017 (which, like many school shootings, involved an AR-15-style rifle), Trump dismissed the idea that guns were to blame. “This isn’t a guns situation,” he said, calling the shooter “a very deranged individual” and pointing to mental health problems
This refrain: “it’s a mental health issue, not a gun issue” became a standard Trump response after shootings.
Following back-to-back massacres in August 2019 (a white supremacist’s attack in El Paso and another mass shooting in Dayton), Trump again pivoted away from firearms. “Mental illness and hatred pull the trigger, not the gun,” he declared, insisting “we have to do something” about mental illness instead. In a televised address, he condemned “the glorification of violence” in video games and the internet – but proposed no significant new gun laws. “I don’t want people to forget that this is a mental health problem,” Trump emphasized.
Public health experts pointed out that these claims were misleading and scapegoating – the American Psychiatric Association noted mass shootings by people with serious mental illness account for under 1% of gun homicides, and researchers warned that portraying shooters as “crazy” was a ploy to avoid talking about easy gun access.
Trump’s empathy for victims has also often been questioned. In early 2024, after a shooter killed students in Perry, Iowa, Trump’s reaction was shockingly cold: “It’s just horrible… But we have to get over it – we have to move forward,” he told grieving Iowans. Such words – essentially telling communities to get over school shootings – underscored the administration’s fatalism.
Likewise, Trump’s chosen 2024 running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, sparked outrage by calling school shootings “a fact of life.” Vance lamented that “I don’t like that this is a fact of life… our schools are soft targets”, then argued the answer was not gun control but to “bolster security” in schools with more armed protection.
Even entertainment and door locks have been dragged into the debate. In October 2024, Trump was asked by parents of shooting victims what he would do about gun violence in schools. He responded that “you wouldn’t be able to take away the guns” because “people need [firearms] for security, they need it for entertainment and for sports and other things.” This almost flippant justification – guns as “entertainment” – underscored Trump’s indifference to grieving parents’ pleas. His answer offered no plan to prevent the next school massacre, beyond defending gun ownership.
Perhaps the most telling quote came when Trump addressed an NRA convention just three days after the Uvalde school massacre in 2022. In Texas, 19 children and 2 teachers had just been murdered by a gunman with an AR-15 – yet Trump used his NRA speech to reject new gun regulations and instead double down on “hardening” schools.
“We need to drastically change our approach to mental health… harden our schools and protect our children,” he said, calling for “a top-to-bottom security overhaul at schools all across our country.”
Trump’s only nod to the actual weapon used was to call the shooter “evil” – otherwise, he blasted “cynical politicians” for pushing gun control (“extreme political agenda” in his words) and insisted “responsible gun owners” are the real solution. “In the absence of a member of law enforcement, there is no one you would rather have nearby when a crisis strikes than an armed, expertly trained member of the NRA,” Trump declared, urging more “good guys with guns” rather than any limit on bad guys’ guns.
Collectively, these statements paint a picture of Republican leadership that refuses to acknowledge the role of guns in gun violence. The GOP narrative instead emphasizes mental health (even as mental health programs are later defunded), security measures (often turning schools into fortresses), and a resigned attitude that mass shootings are inevitable. This rhetoric serves to deflect calls for gun reform, even as the toll of school shootings grows.
Policy and rhetoric aside, budget decisions by the Trump administration and GOP have also undermined school shooting protections. In many cases, resources intended to make schools safer or address root causes of violence have been slashed or rescinded under Republican leadership:
In 2025, the Trump administration moved to cancel $1 billion in federal grants for K-12 school mental health counselors – funding that had been approved in direct response to the Uvalde school shooting. These grants, passed in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, were helping schools hire more psychologists, counselors, and social workers to support students’ well-being. By all accounts, better mental health support in schools is a widely agreed, bipartisan strategy to help prevent violence and identify troubled youth. Yet the incoming Trump team abruptly pulled the plug on these funds in 2025, claiming the grants “reflected the priorities” of the “prior administration” and even asserting – dubiously – that the programs violated civil rights law by focusing on underserved populations.
Internal Education Department notices admitted this decision was driven by a new “priority” to eliminate programs with “DEI” goals. The practical effect is devastating: schools will lose funding for mental health clinicians just as student needs and concerns about safety are rising.
Even Republican negotiators had supported these mental health funds in 2022, but now, under Trump, that commitment has been reversed for ideological reasons.
In his first term, Trump proposed eliminating the Student Support and Academic Enrichment (Title IV-A) grants – a flexible fund that districts use for everything from anti-bullying programs and drug prevention to school counselors and safety equipment. Congress partially rebuffed those cuts, but the intent was clear. Trump’s 2019 budget sought to zero out Title IV-A just after Congress had boosted it to $1.1 billion. This grant was one of the few federal funding streams specifically allowing “safe and healthy students” initiatives, yet the administration showed “a complete lack of commitment” to it.
Similarly, Trump budgets tried to eliminate the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (which fund after-school programs often used for mentoring at-risk youth). These moves would have limited students’ access to supportive activities and caring adults, potentially increasing risk factors for violence.
In a striking paradox, Trump and Republicans who champion “law and order” have also pursued cuts to the very agencies that fight gun crime. In 2025, Trump’s White House proposed major budget reductions for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) – the federal agency that enforces gun laws. The plan would slash ATF’s funding by roughly $400 million (about 25%), taking it to the lowest level since at least 2016.
Notably, at the same time Trump’s allies in Congress have floated folding the ATF into another agency or eliminating it entirely – long a goal of gun-industry lobbyists. By “defunding” federal gun enforcement, the administration directly endangers communities and schools.
Perhaps Trump’s most enduring legacy for gun policy lies in his judicial appointments, which have shifted the legal landscape to favor gun rights extremists and limit government’s ability to enact protections – including those that keep guns away from schools.
During his first term, Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett), all endorsed by the NRA. These justices joined a 6-3 conservative majority that in June 2022 handed down a landmark Second Amendment ruling, New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, dramatically expanding gun rights. The Bruen decision struck down a 100-year-old New York law that required a permit to carry concealed handguns in public. More broadly, it upended the legal test for gun laws, declaring that “modern” gun regulations must have a clear historical analogue from the 18th or 19th century.
This radical standard – effectively making judges act as colonial-era historians – has sown chaos in the courts and weakened longstanding gun safety laws. Since Bruen, lower courts have tossed out or enjoined numerous gun regulations as “unhistorical,” from bans on domestic abusers owning guns to age limits on firearm purchases Even limits on high-capacity magazines and assault-style weapons – the very items often used in school shootings – are now in legal peril under Bruen’s test.
Trump’s influence on the judiciary goes beyond the Supreme Court. He also installed over 200 federal judges who tend to take an expansive view of the Second Amendment.
For example, Trump-nominated judges on the Ninth Circuit recently struck down California’s law limiting individuals to one gun purchase per month, dismissing it as an unconstitutional burden under the new Bruen framework.
The Alliance for Justice reports multiple Trump judges eager to strike down even long-accepted measures, such as prohibitions on 18-20 year-olds carrying handguns or requirements that guns have serial numbers.
In his second term, Trump has only accelerated this legal offensive. Almost immediately, his Justice Department withdrew government defense of a new federal rule regulating “pistol braces” – devices that can turn pistols into short-barreled rifles (a favorite of mass shooters). In July 2025, Trump’s DOJ abruptly dropped an appeal and allowed the court-ordered vacating of ATF’s pistol brace ban, effectively legalizing these concealable pseudo-rifles without background checks. Gun lobby groups celebrated, as a flood of dangerous accessories hit the market that law enforcement had tried to regulate.
Similarly, in May 2025 Trump officials settled a lawsuit in a way that legalized “forced-reset triggers” – an aftermarket gadget that makes a semi-automatic rifle fire almost as fast as a machine gun. These triggers drastically increase firing rate and had been deemed illegal machine gun converters by ATF; after Trump’s intervention, they are now openly sold, “shattering” a decades-old protection against mass killing devices.
Even symbolic gestures to honor victims are getting scrubbed. In Washington, Trump’s ATF leadership removed the “Faces of Gun Violence” photo display from ATF headquarters - a memorial installed in 2024 to remind staff of the children, educators, and officers killed - signaling an unwillingness to even look at the human toll.
And in Florida, the DeSantis administration painted over the rainbow Pulse memorial crosswalk - a site created to honor the 49 people murdered at the Pulse nightclub - brushing off community grief as “political” messaging.
All these actions, from stacking the courts with pro-gun ideologues to actively dismantling gun regulations through the executive branch, serve the NRA’s agenda - not children’s safety. The legal winds now blow strongly in favor of gun manufacturers and owners, weakening the ability of governments at all levels to protect our kids from gun violence.
And although I’m using Donald Trump as a focal point, we need to recognize that his actions align with a long-standing Republican Party doctrine on guns. The GOP’s platform and politicians consistently prioritize gun rights absolutism over gun violence prevention, and this has held true across decades of school shootings.
“Thoughts and prayers” instead of policy has been the GOP’s de facto response to school massacres since Columbine (1999) and especially after Sandy Hook (2012), when a Democratic president’s push for universal background checks was met with a Republican filibuster. Each time horror strikes – whether at Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, Santa Fe, or Uvalde – Democrats call for reforms, public opinion swings toward stronger gun laws, but Republicans in Congress don their AR15 pins and uniformly block major bills from passing.
Notably, the NRA invests heavily in Republican campaigns and lobbying; for instance, it spent over $30 million to help elect Trump in 2016. In return, Republican leaders echo NRA talking points after every school shooting.
The party also embraces culture-war rhetoric that portrays gun regulation as an attack on American freedom. This ideological stance has remained firm even as gun violence became the leading cause of death for children.
In sum, stark conclusion emerges: the Republican Party, led by Donald Trump, has systemically undermined nearly every meaningful protection against school shootings.
Their policy moves – whether repealing background check regulations, defunding mental health counselors, or gutting gun enforcement budgets – have consistently tilted toward gun industry interests and right-wing ideology, not student safety. Their rhetoric shows a callous willingness to accept an endless number of children’s deaths, and their judicial influence will hinder communities from enacting new protections for years to come.
It is a tragic irony that the party which often speaks of protecting children in other contexts has failed so spectacularly to protect living children from gunfire in their classrooms. Instead, Republicans have offered only empty solace and diversion. Meanwhile, school shootings continue to terrorize American families and parents beg for action.
Bottom line: Trump and his party not only fail to prioritize mitigating school shootings – they have actively undone measures designed to reduce the carnage. Thoughts and prayers, my ass.
See you next time,
Frazz