Less than six years ago, then-President Donald Trump took on the influential gun lobby after the deadliest massacre in modern U.S. history. He announced that he…
Less than six years ago, then-President Donald Trump took on the influential gun lobby after the deadliest massacre in modern U.S. history. He announced that he had told the National Rifle Association that “bump stocks are gone,” arguing they “turn legal weapons into illegal machine guns.”
On Friday, Trump’s campaign to return to the White House defended a Supreme Court decision to strike down his own ban on those devices. Trump has been endorsed by the NRA and claimed this year in a speech that he “did nothing” to restrict guns.
The Supreme Court’s ruling called new attention to Trump’s complicated record on the Second Amendment, one that he has downplayed this year given his conservative base’s aversion to gun control — even as Americans broadly support stricter restrictions on firearms, according to public polling.
As president, Trump grappled with the high school massacre in Parkland, Florida and other mass shootings, and at times pledged to strengthen gun laws, only to back away from those vows.
At a meeting with survivors and family members of the Parkland shooting in 2018, for instance, Trump promised to be “very strong on background checks” and later scolded a Republican senator for being “afraid of the NRA.” He claimed he would stand up to the gun lobby and finally get results on quelling gun violence.
But he later retreated after a meeting with the group, expressing support for modest changes to the federal background check system and for arming teachers, while saying in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that there was “not much political support (to put it mildly).
