Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
President Donald Trump
takes the stage to speak Friday at the National Rifle Association convention in Dallas, where he told the audience that Second Amendment rights “will never, ever be under siege as long as I’m your president.”
DALLAS — President Donald Trump on Friday addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting, signaling his strong support for the gun rights group after suggesting months earlier that he was open to some firearm restrictions in the aftermath of a school shooting in south Florida.
“Your Second Amendment rights are under siege, but they will never ever be under siege as long as I’m your president,” Trump told NRA members, whom he referred to as patriots.
Trump has already addressed the group three times and has counted it as a powerful ally from the earliest days of his presidential campaign. The NRA spent more money on behalf of Trump than did any outside group in 2016, deploying its resources for him earlier than in any other presidential cycle. In all, it spent about $30 million in support of his campaign.
But Friday’s speech was his first appearance before NRA members since the Feb. 14 mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school that created a new wave of momentum for the gun-control movement nationwide led by the students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The massacre moved Trump to flirt with stricter gun measures in defiance of NRA priorities, such as raising the legal age to purchase AR15s and similar types of rifles to 21, and expanding background checks to guns sold at shows and online. In a meeting with lawmakers, Trump even mocked Republican lawmakers over the power of the gun lobby, telling one GOP senator that he was “afraid of the NRA.”
But Trump quickly backtracked, instead embracing modest gun-related measures such as legislation to improve information-sharing for the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. That bill, known as the Fix NICS Act, was signed into law as part of a government spending measure in March.
His Justice Department has also proposed barring “bump stocks” — devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to fire like fully automatic weapons — through regulations, although Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill would prefer that be done legislatively.
One of the Parkland student survivors, David Hogg, criticized Trump’s appearance in Dallas in advance.
“It’s kind of hypocritical of him to go there after saying so many politicians bow to the NRA and are owned by them,” Hogg said. “It proves that his heart and his wallet are in the same place.”
Trump, seeking to rally progun voters for the 2018 congressional elections, claimed to the NRA members that Democrats want to “outlaw guns” and that if the nation were to take that step, it might as well ban all vans and trucks because they are the new weapons for “maniac terrorists.”
“We will never give up our freedom. We will live free, and we will die free,” Trump said. “We’ve got to do great in ’18.”
Activists energized by shootings at schools, churches and elsewhere have also focused on those elections.
While the president veered off topic at times — speaking about entertainer Kanye West’s recent support and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s bicycle accident three years ago — he repeatedly returned to the message of the day: his support for the Second Amendment.