The presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump was the keynote speaker at the annual NRA convention in Texas, where the former president pledged: “In my second term we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment.”
[Note: In 2022, President Joe Biden expanded background checks by signing into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which broadened the category of gun sellers that are required to become licensed dealers and run background checks — the category now includes gun show sales.]
Gun control advocate and U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) responded to Trump’s NRA speech: “There is it. Trump says he will work to repeal the bipartisan gun bill, which has helped drive a 20% reduction in urban gun murders. Trump’s goal is to kill more kids in order to make more profits for the gun industry. Plain and simple.”
[Murphy was a U.S. Congressman in 2012 when the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting occurred in Newtown, Connecticut, which was in Murphy’s House district.]
So the explicit position of Trump now is that he wants to repeal background checks, reopen the gun show loophole, roll back federal laws against gun trafficking, and make it easier for kids under 21 to get guns.
This is an insane policy position that has like 12% support. https://t.co/OvY5cd39DQ
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) May 20, 2024
MSNBC political pundit Tim Miller responded to Murphy, concurring with the Senator’s assessment: “So the explicit position of Trump now is that he wants to repeal background checks, reopen the gun show loophole, roll back federal laws against gun trafficking, and make it easier for kids under 21 to get guns. This is an insane policy position that has like 12% support.”
Murphy’s provocative language and accusation also drew dissenters in the comments who assert that, as the NRA has long held, legal gun purchasers are not the cause of gun violence surges. Those surges, they say, are driven by dangerous criminals who will obtain weapons by circumventing whatever laws are put in place anyway, making legal users less safe.
Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans favor stronger gun control restrictions, hoping to limit access to firearms by anyone capable of crimes — from gangland murders to domestic abuse to insurrection.
CNN’s Jeffrey Evan Gold replied to Murphy with a reference to members of the Oath Keepers who attacked the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC on January 6, and who kept a massive stockpile of firearms and other weaponry in a hotel room in Arlington, Virginia, saying: “Next time they won’t leave the guns across the river in Virginia.”