Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Friday there are always going to be people who “slip though the cracks” and that there are no easy solutions to mass shootings like the one Thursday at a community college in Oregon.
Mr. Trump said there are “very strong laws on the books,” but that “you’re always going to have problems.”
“I mean, we have millions and millions of people, we have millions of sick people all over the world —it can happen all over the world, and it does happen all over the world, by the way, but this is sort of unique to this country, the school shootings,” Mr. Trump said via phone on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“And you’re going to have difficulty no matter what,” he said. “Probably we’ll find out with him, like we did with numerous of the others, that gee whiz, they were loners and they were probably sick. You know, oftentimes this happens and the neighborhood says, you know, we sort of saw that about him, and it really looked like he could be a problem.”
A gunman, who has been identified as Chris Harper Mercer, shot and killed nine people and wounded seven Thursday at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
“But you know, it’s awfully hard to put somebody in [an] institution for the rest of their lives based on the fact that he [looks] like he could be a problem. It is a terrible situation. It’s huge mental illness,” he said. “You’re going to have these things happen, and it’s a horrible thing to behold. Horrible.”
Mr. Trump said that “for the next million years, you’re going to have difficulty.”
“People are going to slip through the cracks, and even if you did great mental health programs, people are going to slip through the cracks,” he said. “I’m sure it’s going to be found that this guy was probably, you know, they seem to be loners, they have all sorts of difficulties. … What are you going to do, institutionalize everybody?”
“So you are going to have difficulties — you’re going to have difficulties with many different things, not just this,” he said. “And that’s the way the world works, and by the way, that’s the way the world always has worked.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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