Former President Donald J. Trump, who accepted the endorsement of the National Rifle Association on Saturday, portrayed himself as a powerful ally for gun owners and gun companies, claiming that under President Biden the right to bear arms is “under siege.”
“If the Biden regime gets four more years, they’re going to come for your guns,” Trump said in Dallas, where he chaired the NRA’s annual meeting.
Mr. Trump turned to the group as he stands trial in Manhattan on charges of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to a porn star. On stage in Dallas, he claimed he knew “better than anyone” what it would be like to have his rights taken away.
“In my second term, we will repel any Biden attack on the Second Amendment,” he said to loud applause.
The annual gun rights rally seemed far more subdued than when Mr. Trump last attended in Houston in 2022, just days after the mass shooting of 19 children and two adults at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, and John Cornyn, its senior senator, did not attend this year’s session because of other commitments. Several marquee musicians withdrew their participation out of respect for the victims and their families, they said.
The NRA, the country’s most prominent gun rights group and once a powerful political force, is in trouble. In recent years it has lost members and been plagued by setbacks, defections and internal unrest. In February, a jury in Manhattan found that senior management had engaged in years of financial misconduct and corruption.
Speakers on Saturday pushed back against claims that the group is in decline. “No matter what you’ve heard, we are strong,” said Andrew Arulanandam, the group’s interim chief executive.
Mr. Abbott, who sparked outrage among Texas Democrats after he pardoned on Thursday a man convicted of fatally shooting a protester at a Black Lives Matter demonstration in 2020, received a standing ovation as he took the stage . He largely used his comments to denounce President Biden’s policies, which he said have led to “open borders, gun control, unrest on our college campuses and the erosion of our constitutional rights.”
“Donald Trump is the antidote to Joe Biden,” Abbott said, urging NRA members to support the former president’s election efforts. “No president has fought harder to protect your Second Amendment rights.”
Earlier in the day, dozens of people gathered outside Dallas City Hall to demand stricter gun laws. Gun rights groups have hung T-shirts with the names of people killed by gun violence in Dallas County. Participants pointed to polls that showed a majority of the public supported many of the security measures they called for, including improved background security checks.
“They don’t care that you’re afraid to go to church and that you might get shot,” Ana-Maria Ramos, a Texas state representative, told those gathered, condemning state and federal lawmakers’ blocking of stricter gun safety laws .
Jill Brown, 66, a retired school nurse, sat in a lawn chair at City Hall Plaza and said she was concerned about the long-term psychological impact of mass shootings and active shooter drills on students.
According to the Associated Press, 217 people died in 42 mass shootings in the U.S. last year, one of the deadliest years on record. On May 6, 2023, a gunman killed eight people at the Allen Premium Outlets north of Dallas.
On Saturday, the Trump campaign named a white St. Louis couple who pleaded guilty after pointing guns at black protesters as they marched past their home in 2020 – and later received a pardon from Missouri’s Republican governor – to a “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition.
At the NRA meeting, Mr. Trump, whose campaign donations have stalled in Texas, urged gun owners to get to the polls to help get him elected. He also warned against wasting their time on Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate he called a “radical leftist,” adding: “Don’t think about it. Don’t waste your vote.”
Mr. Trump also vowed to reverse Biden administration policies, including measures to regulate firearms.
“It’s a disgrace what’s going on, but with me in the White House, the radical gun grabbers are going to run right into a very, very powerful wall,” he said.
Mr. Trump, who has described himself as “the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House,” has a patchy history on the issue.
At an outdoor show in Pennsylvania in February, he addressed thousands of NRA members and promised that “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” when he returns to the White House. He also claimed that he did “nothing” to curb gun ownership during his time in office.
But as president, Mr. Trump at times promised support for stricter gun laws, and his administration introduced one of the most significant measures to curb gun violence in recent decades — a rule banning bump stocks, the attachments that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire sustained, rapid fire Outbreaks. The legality of the ban, enacted after a mass shooting at a Las Vegas music festival in 2017 that left 60 people dead, is currently being decided by the Supreme Court. The Biden administration has asked the justices to stick with it.
After another mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 that left 17 people dead, Mr. Trump claimed he would be “very strict on background checks,” but he eventually changed course.
In a statement following Mr. Trump’s remarks at the NRA convention, Vice President Kamala Harris, who leads the first federal Office for Gun Violence Prevention, praised the Biden administration’s successes on gun safety legislation. She pointed to the signing of major legislation restricting access to firearms and increased investments in the country’s mental health system, actions that ended nearly 30 years of gridlock in Congress over combating gun violence.
She also criticized Mr. Trump for saying “we have to get over this” after a shooting in Iowa this year that killed a sixth-grader. Mr. Trump “serves the gun lobby and threatens to make the crisis worse if he is re-elected,” Ms. Harris said.
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2024-05-19 02:09:08
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