Ready to take on NRA over guns, says Trump

US President Donald Trump has said that if necessary, he would fight against the National Rifle Association (NRA) as he looks at ways to prevent another high school mass shooting.

At a meeting on Monday in the White House with a majority of the nation's governors, Trump said he could easily resolve his differences with the NRA, a group with which he has had close relations up to now, in the debate about preventing more fatal shootings, reports Efe news.

"Don't worry about the NRA, they're on our side. Half of you are so afraid of the NRA. There's nothing to be afraid of.

"And you know what, if they're not with you, we have to fight them every once in a while, that's OK. Sometimes we're going to have to be very tough and we're going to have to fight 'em," he added.

The NRA has opposed, for now, two Trump proposals: raising the minimum age for buying a long gun under US federal law from 18 to 21, and banning bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to vastly increase the firing rate.

NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch told ABC News on Sunday that the organisation does not support any ban on bump stocks.

Nonetheless, Trump insisted on the ban this Monday, recalling that he had instructed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to develop measures to prohibit those lethal devices.

Trump, who almost a year ago promised the NRA that they would have a friend in the White House, and who received some $30 million from the group for his electoral campaign, said Monday that he had lunched over the weekend with the leaders of the organisation, Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox, to bring their positions on the matter closer together.

Earlier during the meeting with the governors, Trump again criticised the response of security forces to the February 14 massacre at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida, where a former student Nikolas Cruz, 19, opened fire and killed 17 students and staffers.

The Broward Sheriff's Office disclosed Thursday that Scot Peterson, the armed school resource deputy assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, remained outside the building as Cruz went on his rampage.

"I really believe I'd run in there even if I didn't have a weapon. I think most of the people in this room would've done that too," Trump said on Monday.

--IANS

ksk