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At his first campaign rally after mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, President Trump appeared to back away from supporting a possible expansion of background checks in favor of a push for more attention to mental illness. "There is a mental illness problem that has to be dealt with. It's not the gun that pulls the trigger — it's the person holding the gun," Trump said to roars and a standing ovation from the Manchester, N.H., crowd. (Taylor, 8/15)

Trump argued that institutions for people with mental illness — whom “we can’t let … be on the streets” — were necessary to curb gun violence. “We have to start building institutions again because, you know, if you look at the ’60s and ’70s, so many of these institutions were closed, and the people were just allowed to go onto the streets,” Trump said on Thursday. “That was a terrible thing for our country.” (Choi, 8/15)

Many psychiatric institutions were closed beginning in the 1950s amid reports of inhumane treatment, patient-abuse scandals, changing attitudes toward mental health care and the development of drugs to treat mental illness. While Trump on Thursday revived the debate over whether to isolate the mentally ill in long-term care facilities, Democrats have argued in recent weeks that, by repeatedly blaming mental illness for gun violence, Trump is stigmatizing those with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, severe depression or other serious conditions. (Sonmez, 8/15)