The White House on Friday backed down from President Donald Trump’s praised support for tougher universal background checks for buying firing arms. During a press conference White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that President Trump supports “not necessarily universal background checks, but certainly improving the background check system.”
“He wants to see what that legislation, the final piece of it looks like,” she said to the reporters at the White House.
Adding that “universal means something different to a lot of people. He certainly wants to focus and improve the background check system.”
Sanders remarks come after President Trump surprised everyone in Washington when he publicly gave support for most of the gun-control proposals submitted by Democratic lawmakers during the meeting with members from both parties that aired live on television.
During the Wednesday meeting, President Trump said that he is in agreement with Democratic Senator Chris Murphy who stated that all “Americans want universal background checks.”
“You have a different president now,” the president said to the senator. “You went through a lot of presidents and you didn’t get it done. You have a different president. And I think, maybe, you have a different attitude, too. I think people want to get it done.”
At a previous meeting, the president first supported a less strict proposal that was written by Murphy and Republican Senator John Cornyn and it was designed only to strengthen the already existing background-check system, but not expand it.
According to The Hill, Sanders’s comments come one night after Trump had a meeting with officials from the National Rifle Association lobbying arm, a group that he urged lawmakers to defy on guns even though he long supported it.
Sanders stated that Trump promised the NRA “only that he’ll continue to support the Second Amendment.”
Meanwhile, Trump in his Thursday tweet said that he had a “Good (Great) meeting in the Oval Office tonight with the NRA!”
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