Ahead of former President Trump’s Friday visit to Harrisburg to speak at the National Rifle Association’s annual gathering, the Democratic National Committee is putting up a billboard at the intersection of S. Second and Mulberry streets that includes some of the former president’s own words.
“Donald Trump to victims of gun violence: ‘get over it’,” the sign reads. It’s a reference to comments Trump made in January after a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, that left a sixth-grade student and the teenage gunman dead, and five others injured.
At a campaign rally in Sioux City, Iowa, on Jan. 5, Trump began by offering “support and deepest sympathies” to the victims and their families. “It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here,” Trump continued. “But we have to get over it, we have to move forward.”
Trump, the current front-runner for the GOP nomination for president, is scheduled to address the NRA’s Presidential Forum at its Great American Outdoor show, an annual event that drew 200,000 attendees last year, the organization said. It’s Trump’s first scheduled visit to Pennsylvania of 2024, a state he won in 2016 but lost to President Joe Biden in 2020.
It’s Trump’s eighth time addressing the NRA, according to the organization, which says the former president “never let NRA members down,” including his appointment of three U.S. Supreme Court justices. All three of Trump’s appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — played a role in the court’s 2022 ruling that struck down a New York law requiring people to show a need to carry a gun in public.
“Americans need common sense solutions to make our communities safer, but Donald Trump thinks gun violence victims need to just ‘get over it’,” DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “This sickening behavior is what we’ve come to expect from Trump, who is running on a dangerous and unpopular agenda that would put more guns in classrooms and roll back bipartisan gun safety legislation.”