» Trump laments latest school shooting and vows action

PHOTOGRAPHER: The New York Times

President Donald Trump delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 18, 2018.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday expressed heartbreak and frustration about a deadly school shooting at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, and said his administration would do “everything in our power” to keep guns away from those who should not have them.

“This has been going on for too long in our country — too many years, too many decades now,” Trump said in the East Room of the White House, where he was making remarks on prison reform.

“My administration is determined to do everything in our power to protect our students, secure our schools, and do everything we can to keep weapons out of the hands of those who pose a threat to themselves and to others,” the president said.

Months ago, Trump vowed to take action on school safety and gun restrictions in the wake of a deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, in February.

At the time, he said he would look at stricter background checks and raising the minimum age for buying an assault weapon. Both of those proposals are opposed by the National Rifle Association, of which the president is a member and has benefited from strong political support from gun owners.

Trump also had called for an NRA-backed proposal to arm teachers, and said he would favor taking guns away from potentially dangerous people without due process.

But the president did not press for action on any of those initiatives, and Congress did not follow through.

On Friday afternoon, in a Twitter post directed to the Santa Fe school community in Texas, Trump vowed that “we are with you in this tragic hour, and we will be with you forever…”