22) Trump is Wrong on Guns

Reason #22 to Vote Blue on Nov 5

Let’s look at some indicators that might tell us what to expect from the two candidates on the topic of gun safety.

This is a complex subject with conflicting views and an amazingly confusing matrix of federal and state laws. If you want to dive deeply, here is a great website where you can look at all aspects of gun safety regulation.

On the specific subject of protecting schools from gun violence, Trump, the NRA, and many GOP legislators support the idea of arming some members of the school staff to “take out” a perpetrator. On the other hand, the Sandy Hook Promise organization offers many evidence based suggestions for reducing gun violence in schools that do not include arming teachers, but rather focus on prevention.

Keep in mind, in all fairness, no President can sign a law unless Congress passes it! But they can refuse NRA money and they can use their skills and their staff to prod Congress to act.

What to Expect from Kamala Harris

Assault weapons: Harris said she’d sign a nation-wide law banning the sale of assault weapons.

In June 2022, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It was hailed as the most significant gun control legislation since the 1994 assault weapons ban. But there are still many loopholes and the 50 States have their own laws that vary widely making it hard to be sure …

Who is restricted by red flag laws?
How universal are background checks?

Improve national red flag laws and the universal background checks system: Harris said she supports this.

NRA Money and Puppet Strings: Harris has received nothing from the NRA.

What to Expect from Donald Trump

Assault weapons: In Trump’s book published in 2000, The America We Deserve, he supported the existing ban on assault weapons. [The ban then in force was not permanent; the law expired in 2004]. By the time he ran for President in 2015-2016, he had changed his mind and opposed a new assault weapon ban.

Then came the horrendous Parkland School shooting. He was upset as many of us were, and supported several gun law changes, apparently including a ban on the sale of assault weapons. NOTE CAREFULLY his comments in this meeting with members of Congress at the White House:

Mr. Trump’s support for gun control measures — which he unrolled on live television from the White House on Feb. 28, 2018 [see above]— astonished lawmakers from both parties. But the next day, N.R.A. officials met with Mr. Trump without any cameras or reporters in the room, and he immediately backed down.

They convinced him that he would not get re-elected in 2020 if he proceeded with what he had called common sense reforms. It is ironic that he publicly chided a Congressman [above video] for being afraid of the NRA, and here is the President of the United States, cowardly, in private! falling down on his knees before the NRA.

He did use an executive order to stop the sale of bumpstocks which can convert semiautomatic firearms into automatic weapons, but his Supreme Court ruled the executive order unconstitutional.

Now, as Mr. Trump campaigns for another term in the White House, he is decidedly more pro-guns. On Feb 9, 2024, Trump promised the NRA:

If I am in office in 2025, “no one will lay a finger on your firearms. …Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.” He specifically included ending: (1) the Biden administration’s ‘Zero-Tolerance’ policy that revokes federal licenses from firearm dealers that violate gun laws, and (2) regulations on pistol braces, or stabilization devices that have also been used in gun massacres.

Improve national red flag laws and the universal background checks system: Trump opposes all changes. In fact, in 2017, shortly after taking office, Trump ended a regulation that made it harder for people with known mental illness to buy guns.

NRA Money and Puppet Strings: Trump received $30 million from the NRA during the 2016 election alone. As one think tank concluded regarding his first term:

Throughout his presidency, Donald Trump has proven that the executive board at the NRA is the only domestic constituency that has his loyalty when it comes to gun policy. Common sense gun safety reform is supported by a record high of Americans, and that includes gun owners. Yet the political debate in Washington around gun safety measures is no longer a discussion between well-meaning and good faith actors on both sides—it’s a fight between those that stand to profit from the sale of firearms and a public that is sick of watching its friends, family, and neighbors die because of gun violence. We have a president who is too weak to stand up to the gun lobby that bought him with record campaign contributions in 2016, and we pay the price for it every single day. It’s time to cut the strings and begin a new day in America.