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Within 24 hours this weekend, the United States has seen two mass shootings that claimed the lives of 29 people and left dozens more injured. In El Paso, Texas, 20 people died on Saturday afternoon when a gunman opened fire in a shopping center.
In Dayton, Ohio, 9 more died in the Oregon entertainment district early Sunday morning.
President Trump has tweeted numerous times about this tragedy, and spoken to the press. This morning he shared that he wished those killed in Texas and Ohio not “die in vain”, and stronger background checks need to be married immigration reform.
Both of the shooters were white males under the age of 25.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1158330513951735809
President Trump is getting a lot of flak for his explosive language that some think led to a culture of mass shootings. Beto O’Rourke, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2020 elections, said that “white nationalist terrorism” is a problem in the US, and that shooters are motivated by “the kind of fear that this president traffics”.
Pete Buttigieg, also a 2020 Democratic hopeful, says that at minimum, the President is “condoning and encouraging white nationalism”.
Motives for the Dayton shooting are still unclear, but a manifesto shared a half an hour before the El Paso shooting talks about a “Hispanic invasion” and uses the term “send them back”, a phrase Trump supporters have made famous during his 2016 campaign and the last few years of his presidency.
