The White House responded to the outcry for change after the shooting in Parkland, Florida last week, promising to meet with survivors for a “listening session” in the near future.
The White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, announced the plan on Tuesday during her briefing.
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“We will be hosting parents, teachers and students here at the White House to discuss efforts to ensure safety at our schools,” she said. “Members of the Parkland community will be attending this listening session, as will individuals who were affected by past school shootings, including the Columbine and Sandy Hook shootings. On Thursday we will be hosting local officials, including members of the law enforcement community, to continue that conversation.”
When asked what the topic of conversation at the listening session would be, Sanders said, “I think it’s a wide range of issues, you have a number of people that unfortunately have been through a horrific tragedy like the one that we saw in Parkland, Florida last week, as well as some that hope they never have to go through that. We’ll have a number of parents and teachers and students from schools in the local area as well, and this is a listening session to see what can be done better, what the actual concerns of the students are, what they would like to see.”
The news comes on the same day that President Donald Trump proposed a ban on bump stock devices like the one used in the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting, which can effectively turn a semi-automatic weapon into an automatic machine gun. The proposal shocked many of Trump’s supporters, who counted on the president to keep gun legislation exactly as it is.
The announcement raised questions about what else the Trump administration might do to combat the trend of mass shootings, including a possible renewal of the assault weapons ban, which was in place from 1994 to 2004. The law prohibited sale and ownership of the AR-15, the assault rifle used in many of the nation’s biggest tragedies, including the Parkland shooting. Sanders said that was a possibility they were considering.
“We haven’t closed the door on any front,” Sanders said. “That’s what the next several days and weeks will be, to have conversations and see what this process looks like.”
