Opinion

President Trump in denial over scale of US gun problem

Just a few weeks after America's worst mass shooting and the country is again in shock following murder on an unspeakable scale by a heavily armed gunman, this time in a church in Texas.

Devin Patrick Kelley, a former member of the US Air Force, killed 26 people after opening fire with an assault rifle at the First Baptist Church at Sutherland Springs on Sunday.

Details of the victims are starting to emerge and it is clear that a number of children, the youngest aged just one year, were among the dead.

It is reported that as many as eight members of one family, including a pregnant woman, were murdered by Kelley in his cold-blooded rampage.

Survivors told yesterday how the killer deliberately shot crying babies as he walked through the building targeting worshippers desperately trying to protect their children.

It was a scene of unimaginable horror yet the vast majority of people will find it incomprehensible that those in positions of authority fail to see the need for tighter gun controls.

A short time after the massacre, President Trump sought to downplay the atrocity saying it wasn't a `guns situation' but a `mental health problem.'

Whatever Kelley's motivation - and there is a documented history of violence towards family members - the fact is he was able to arm himself with weapons capable of causing wholesale carnage in a short space of time.

Reports suggest he fired at least 450 rounds during this bloodbath.

Yet when Donald Trump was asked if he would support `extreme vetting' for gun purchases he responded by saying that stricter gun control measures could have led to more deaths because a bystander who shot Kelley would not have been armed.

It is a strange logic that fails to recognise the appalling toll of death inflicted on American citizens by violent individuals who have access to assault rifles.

It is also apparent that President Trump has absolutely no intention of tackling this slaughter by addressing gun control.