In response to repeated calls by the soon-to-be 45th president to allow guns in schools, a gun control group formed by famed Star Trek actor George Takei is vowing to stop him.
In January, during a campaign stop in Vermont, Trump, then still in a crowded field of presidential candidates, promised, “I will get rid of gun-free zones on schools, and — you have to — and on military bases,” he said. “My first day, it gets signed, okay? My first day. There’s no more gun-free zones.”
After he was the last man standing for the GOP and was accepting the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in Louisville, Kentucky in May, Trump reiterated his promise to disband gun free zones, only to temper his remarks within days in a CNN interview.
Trump’s official four-page platform on Second Amendment rights doesn’t mention “gun free zones” or even the word “school,” though it does address allowing service members to carry firearms on bases and at recruiting centers. His campaign did not respond to comment on the matter when Guns.com asked for clarification earlier this year.
Still, with the “first-day” promise lingering, One Pulse for America, an LGBT-centric gun control group founded while Trump was on the campaign trail, wants to make sure the gun prohibitions remain in place.
“This is not acceptable,” said One Pulse Director Ladd Everitt in a statement emailed to Guns.com. “The safety of our children is of paramount importance to us and we will not tolerate Trump and the National Rifle Association — who spent more than $20 million for Trump this election cycle — putting them at risk in order to further gun industry profits.”
The group, which claims over 74,000 members, is prepared to take a stand to include “direct nonviolent action, if necessary” to oppose any attempt by the Trump administration and Congress to remove federal protections for gun-free zones around schools.
The Gun-Free School Zones Act, sponsored by then-U.S. Sen. Joe Biden in 1990, has long restricted gun possession in school zones though it has been successfully challenged in the courts as unconstitutional. Currently, at least two bills are afoot in the U.S. House by Republican lawmakers to repeal its provisions. Everitt is concerned a newly reformed GOP-controlled Congress will soon speed similar legislation to Trump’s desk.
“We call on all Members of Congress to make it clear where they stand on this critical issue,” said Everitt. “We expect our elected officials in the nation’s capital to vote against any effort to eliminate gun-free zones at our K-12 schools and will hold them accountable for their actions.”
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