Trump Has `Obligation' to Produce Package on Guns, Graham Says

(Bloomberg) -- Pressure on Donald Trump and Congress to enact gun-control measures isn’t subsiding as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said the president has an “obligation” to get behind the effort.

Graham of South Carolina said Trump needs to make a proposal to Congress on gun control and school safety, and that Republicans must work with Democrats to get legislation passed after the school shooting last month in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

“If we don’t, we’re going to get hurt because most Americans believe we should solve problems that Americans are facing like gun violence and school safety problems,” Graham said of Republicans on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday. “If we don’t take this up and Democrats don’t work with us, we will all suffer, and we should.”

Trump cheered gun-control advocates during a White House meeting Feb. 28 with Republican and Democratic lawmakers. He stunned both sides by endorsing expanded background checks, raising the age limit for buying some firearms and keeping the mentally ill from obtaining weapons.

The White House appeared to backpedal on those comments following a meeting the next day between the president and the NRA’s top lobbyist, Chris Cox, who said on Twitter that Trump and Vice President Mike Pence “don’t want gun control.” Trump tweeted, “Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office tonight with the NRA!”

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White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Friday that Trump is not “fully on board” with a background-check proposal by Senators Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat. She told Fox News that he won’t weigh in again on contents of legislation that he would sign until he sees what lawmakers produce.

Trump’s initial support for gun-control measures reflect his political instincts that Republicans will be hurt in November’s mid-term elections if they don’t pass legislation, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“He knows the mood of the country has shifted such that he and his party are going to pay a huge price at the polls in 2018 and 2020 if they don’t start supporting things like universal background checks,” said Murphy, a vocal proponent of gun legislation.

Asked on CNN whether Congress will simply do nothing on guns, Manchin said, “It’s a high probability that could happen if this thing goes mute.” Still, the students from Parkland are keeping the pressure on, he said.

“We see a movement we have never seen before,” Manchin said.

To contact the reporter on this story: David McLaughlin in Washington at dmclaughlin9@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net, Mark Niquette, Ros Krasny

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