President Donald Trump’s proposal to raise the minimum age for some gun purchases to 21 is a non-starter on Capitol Hill.
The president appeared to be softening his support for legislation that would bar teens from purchasing semi-automatic weapons this week.
A top GOP congressional aide told DailyMail.com on Tuesday that the prospects are ‘pretty dim,’ and that could be why the president is backing away from it.
‘That proposal won’t get a lot of traction in Congress,’ the source said.
President Donald Trump’s proposal to raise the minimum age for some gun purchases to 21 is a non-starter on Capitol Hill
Trump did not put forward the proposal during at Friday speech before conservative activists, and he did he bring it up Monday at a bipartisan meeting with governors at the White House, where gun violence was the top talker during a televised session.
Sources familiar with the White House’s discussions with Capitol Hill told CNN later that Trump was seemingly moving away from his previous position.
A congressional aide told DailyMail.com that discussions about the president’s proposals, like allowing teachers to pack heat, were still in their early stages, with Congress having been out of session last week and only just returning on Monday to Washington.
Furthermore, the House will be out from Wednesday on as the late evangelical pastor Billy Graham lies in honor in the U.S. Capitol.
The source said that the basic posture of the House is to see what can pass in the GOP-controlled Senate, which is focused this week on nominations.
The White House insisted Monday that Trump had not ‘downgraded’ the proposal to make some gun sales 21+ and ‘the president is still supportive of the concept’ as a weekend meeting with the National Rifle Association that was kept off the president’s schedule came to light.
The NRA does not support new age restrictions on firearms sales and its spokeswoman suggested Sunday that Trump was not firmly committed to his position.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters on Monday that it ‘would be ridiculous’ to intimate that Trump had been influenced by the powerful gun group that opposes the restrictions ‘considering the number of individuals he’s met with that come from both the far left to the far right, and a lot of those in between.’
She said Trump plans to continue his talks with a lawmakers this week in meetings at the White House and would ultimately base his decision on what is outlined in legislative text.
‘In concept, the President still supports it, but in terms of legislation, we’d need to see what that looks like before we weigh in further,’ Sanders said.