Trump Says 'Hundreds More' Would Have Died in Sutherland Springs if Texas Had Stricter Gun Laws

Welcome to WHAT NOW, a morning round-up of the news/fresh horrors that await you today.

“Hundreds more” people in Sutherland Springs, TX, would be dead if the state had stricter gun laws, according to President Donald Trump, clairvoyant gun expert.

Devin Patrick Kelley, a 26-year-old former Air Force member, opened fire during Sunday morning worship at the First Baptist Church in the tiny town, killing 26. But, when he was asked during a news conference in Seoul on Tuesday whether he would consider implementing “extreme vetting” to buy guns, Trump was reportedly annoyed by the question, first saying it wasn’t an appropriate topic to discuss “in the heart of South Korea,” according to The Washington Post.

Trump went on to say, “if we did what you are suggesting it would have made no difference three days ago.”

The president again praised Stephen Willeford, a local resident who later grabbed his own rifle and engaged Kelley in gunfight outside the church, as a “hero” and a“brave man.”

“If he had not had a gun, instead of having 26 dead, you would have had hundreds more dead. … It’s not going to help,” Trump said.

Kelley was later found dead in his truck of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Willeford’s risking his life is unequivocally heroic—although conservatives have long relied on the myth of a “good guy with a gun” as the last stand to stop acts of mass violence—but the gunman never should’ve been allowed to buy the guns used in one of the deadliest mass shootings of modern U.S. history. The Air Force admitted that it failed to relay Kelley’s domestic violence conviction to law enforcement, which could have rendered him unable to buy the guns.

WHAT ELSE?

• Harvey Weinstein had assembled a network of spies—private corporate intelligence officials—to rake up dirt dozens of actresses and journalists, sometimes including information of their sexual histories, Ronan Farrow reports at The New Yorker.
• The emerging stories about the victims of the church shooting are heartbreaking. Among the 26 dead are eight members of the same families, the youngest of whom was just 17 months old.
• The Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling to stop the execution of a man who, due to declining health, can’t remember the murder he’s spent half his life on death row for committing.

WHAT’S HAPPENING?

• It’s Election Day 2017. One race to watch: the Virginia governor’s race, which is polling super-tight between Trump-backing xenophobe Ed Gillespie and Democrat Ralph Northam, the lieutenant governor who promised to kill sanctuary cities, even though the state doesn’t have any.

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