Around 11:30 AM on Sunday November 5th, 26-year-old Devin Kelly walked into a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas and opened fire, killing 26 people— 4% of the small town’s population. In a joint news conference this morning, President Donald Trump said the cause of the shooting was Kelly’s “mental health problem, ” and not the flawed gun legislation in the United States.
“Mental health is your problem here. This isn’t a guns situation,” Trump said. “This is a mental health problem at the highest level. It’s a very, very sad event. A very, very sad event, but that’s the way I view it.”
This was Kim Kardashian’s response to that same shooting:
In response to the devastating Las Vegas shooting, which claimed the lives of 58 people on October 1st, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, of gun legislation, “There will be certainly time for that policy discussion to take place, but that’s not the place that we’re in.” 36 days later, no legislation to ban bump stocks or any other gun accessory has been drafted. It seems we still aren’t in that mystical “place” our press secretary alluded to.
This was Kim Kardashian’s response to that same shooting:
Back in June, Kim Kardashian West took to her personal app with an impassioned post calling for stricter gun control laws. She cited previous mass shootings, including Columbine High School, Virginia Tech University and the 2016 massacre in Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. She continues:
“In almost 20 years, our country has made very little progress in enacting laws that would help protect innocent Americans from people who should not have access to firearms. Right now, there are more guns owned by civilians in this country than in any other country in the world.
In February of this year, President [Donald] Trump actually signed a bill revoking a regulation recommended by President [Barack] Obama that would have added 75,000 names of people with registered mental illnesses to a national background check database. This is Crazy!“
Five months before Donald Trump blamed the Sutherland Springs church massacre on mental illness, reality TV star Kim Kardashian pointed out he signed a bill that disallowed 75,000 people with registered mental illnesses to go on a national database that would prevent them from acquiring a firearm.
So, Mr. President, if “this isn’t a guns situation” but is instead “a mental health problem at the highest level,” why are we not immediately— right this instant— passing legislation to block those with mental health disorders from buying guns?
Before Donald Trump became president, he spent a lot of time railing on the Obama administration. His response to the June 12, 2016 Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting was to blame muslim immigrants and “a dysfunctional immigration system,” and not the fact that our senate voted against background checks in firearm sales.
“We have a dysfunctional immigration system, which does not permit us to know who we let into our country, and it does not permit us to protect our citizens properly. We have an incompetent administration.”
He explained how his solution would be a muslim ban, clarifying that “They’re pouring in and we don’t know what we’re doing.”
This was Kim Kardashian’s response:
In the aforementioned app post, Kim Kardashian announced she would be working with Everytown, an organization which “researches a range of vital issues surrounding gun violence, develops data-driven solutions, and works with lawmakers and people like you to pass common-sense laws and policies that save lives.” She clarifies that she is not anti-gun but is instead pro-restriction:
“After what happened to me in Paris, I know how important it is to be safe and to have armed security,” she explains. “All of my security team is armed, but they also support stricter gun control laws and believe that we should restrict access to firearms for people with mental illness, anyone previously convicted of a misdemeanor, those who have been subject to a temporary restraining order and those at a higher risk of committing gun violence.”
In response, the NRA— the pro-gun organization crucial to Trump’s electoral victory —made fun of Kardashian’s assault, the aftermath of which resulted in PTSD real enough to seek professional counseling over.
Her June post ended with a push to not allow ourselves to become desensitized by gun violence, despite the alarming frequency of gun-related tragedies and massacres.
“I hope that we won’t become numbed by the increasing number of gun-related tragedies we see on the news. We all have a voice and a right to feel safe, to be protected from people who are a threat, particularly when handed a deadly weapon. I want to help build a safer future for my children and I believe together we can find ways to do that, while still protecting the rights of the American people.”
Surely that’s a sentiment we can all agree on?