Trump says Texas church shooting caused by ‘mental health problem’ not guns

Kiyoshi Ota | Pool/Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

US President Donald Trump (C) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (not seen) hold a joint press conference after holding an inter-delegation meeting at Akasaka Palace in Tokyo, Japan on November 6, 2017.

Trump — who has received political support from the National Rifle Association — has consistently been against implementing more rigorous domestic gun control laws. Indeed, in February Trump quietly signed a bill into law that rolled back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to buy a gun.

“Fortunately … somebody else had a gun that was shooting in the opposite direction,” Trump said at the press conference.

Devin Patrick Kelley, 26, was identified by authorities as the gunman who killed more than two dozen people in a hail of gunfire at a rural Texas church. Law enforcement officials identified Kelley, who was killed following the incident at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, hours after news of the shooting first broke. The church’s pastor and his wife lost their teenage daughter in the massacre, according to a report by the Associated Press.

— CNBC’s Everett Rosenfeld, Javier E. David, and Terri Cullen contributed to this report.