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Our weather vane president

In the latest debate over gun controls, Donald Trump is once again playing fast and loose with the truth by demonstrating his flexibility toward it. He has made clear long ago he is no George Washington admitting to his father that he chopped down that cherry tree.

After calling for raising the age limit for buying high-capacity assault weapons from 18 to 21, Trump has backed off in the face of National Rifle Association ire. Now he is calling for training teachers to use firearms in the classroom, an idea soundly rejected by the National Education Association as an invitation to more mayhem there.

He has announced establishment of a Federal Commission on School Safety under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos in the wake of the Parkland, Fla., mass shooting by assault weapon that claimed 17 lives, resurrecting the interminable and so-far unsuccessful fight for stronger gun controls.

DeVos, a longtime critic of the public school system, has promised “a pragmatic plan to dramatically increase school safety.” Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer has dismissed it as “tiny baby steps designed not to upset the NRA, when the gun violence epidemic in this country demands that giant steps be taken.”

But Schumer himself falls far short of calling for the giant step of outright ban of all assault weapons that was enacted by Democrats in 1994 and allowed to expire under a 10-year sunset provision in 2004. It has been reintroduced by its original sponsor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, but with little evident intent in either party to restore the ban despite the public clamor.

Instead, Schumer said his Senate Democrats “will push to go further, including passing universal background checks and (only) a debate on banning assault weapons.”

As for Trump, a White House official did not address the question of the continued availability of such weapons. Two weeks ago, the president offered himself as standing up to the gun lobby of which he had always been a staunch supporter.

“Now, this is not a popular way to say in terms of the NRA,” he boasted, “but I’m saying it anyway. You can buy a handgun — you can’t buy one, you have to have to wait until you’re 21. But you can buy the kind of weapon used in the school shooting at 18. I think it’s something you have to think about.” Apparently he has thought it over and doesn’t worry about it after all.

In an earlier White House meeting with teachers and students, the president appeared to pivot to training and arming some teachers. He said “a gun-free zone to a maniac, because they’re all cowards, a gun-free zone is, let’s go in and let’s attack, because bullets aren’t coming back at us.”

Last week, Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, like Trump a strong NRA member and backer, unlike the president finally buckled to the heavy pressure from his constituents, signing a new gun-control law that raises the age for buying an assault weapon to 21, requires a three-day waiting period and bans the possession of fire-power enhancing bump stocks.

In signing it, Scott said he was doing “what I think are commonsense solutions,” and expressing hope his action would be “the beginning a real conversation about how we make our schools safe.”

A bipartisan bill has been introduced by Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut to tighten background checks on the mental stability of applicants.

But Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin is opposing raising the age limit on assault-weapons purchase. He argued: “We send our sons and daughters over to Afghanistan, in Iraq, at age 18. They defend our freedoms. I think if they do that. They ought to able to buy a hunting rifle.”

But that description of a mass-murder weapon is a deceitful and disgraceful definition of the AR-15 mechanism that sprayed down 17 people at the Florida school, who weren’t innocent deer but rather kids trying to get an education.

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Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.

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