Washington • President Donald Trump spent at least 30 minutes on the phone Tuesday with Wayne LaPierre, the chief executive of the National Rifle Association, the latest conversation in an aggressive campaign by gun rights advocates to influence the White House in the weeks since the back-to-back mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.
The call ended the way that LaPierre had hoped it would: with Trump espousing NRA talking points in the Oval Office and warning of the radical steps he said Democrats wanted to take in violation of the Second Amendment.
“We have very, very strong background checks right now, but we have sort of missing areas and areas that don’t complete the whole circle,” the president told reporters Tuesday afternoon, adding, “I have to tell you, that it’s a mental problem.