In the June issue, I laid out the stakes of this upcoming election in the feature titled, “It’s All On The Line For Gun Owners In The 2024 Election.” I warned that “the Second Amendment, as we know it, cannot withstand another [Joe] Biden administration.” While readers of this magazine almost certainly knew that already, I laid out a case they could share with their less-informed friends and family who may still be on the fence.
This month, I have an even easier job in proudly announcing the NRA Political Victory Fund’s endorsement of Donald J. Trump for president. As with Biden, we don’t have to guess how a Trump Administration would behave on Second Amendment issues: His record speaks for itself. The contrast between the candidates couldn’t be starker, and the choice for gun owners couldn’t be clearer. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to secure the Second Amendment in perpetuity.
Donald Trump’s greatest achievement in support of the right to keep and bear arms during his first term was his appointment of three rock-solid originalists to the U.S. Supreme Court: Neil M. Gorsuch; Brett M. Kavanaugh; and Amy Coney Barrett. Originalism is the principle underlying the landmark cases of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010), which ushered in the high court’s modern Second Amendment renaissance.
Trump’s appointments ensured that trend continued, even in the dark days of the Biden administration, with the court’s six-to-three majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022). That opinion not only reaffirmed that the Second Amendment protects a right to bear arms in public for self-defense, but also enshrined an originalist standard of review for all Second Amendment cases. This means the Second Amendment, as the founding generation understood it when gun-control laws were few and far between, remains the law of the land. Gun-control laws must now be scrutinized under that historical tradition, not by the whims of jurists who believe the Second Amendment has outlived its usefulness. All three justices appointed by President Trump voted in favor of Justice Clarence Thomas’s majority opinion in Bruen.
Moreover, in contrast to the Supreme Court’s hands-off treatment of firearm issues in the 10 years after McDonald, the current court is already poised to decide three more significant cases involving gun control. Of course, each case must be decided on its merits, and there are no guarantees on the outcomes. But the Second Amendment is no longer relegated to second-class status, thanks to a Supreme Court whose composition will remain part of Trump’s legacy for decades to come.
Whether the next president will have the opportunity to appoint additional Supreme Court justices remains to be seen. It is certainly a possibility, with two of the current members of the court over 70 years of age. Based on the respect his appointments have shown for the Second Amendment to date, however, President Trump can be counted on to select justices who take the entire Constitution and Bill of Rights seriously.
Trump’s focus on the judiciary, moreover, did not end with the Supreme Court. He was also very productive in making lower-court appointments, seating 54 appellate judges and 174 district judges. This is especially important, because most cases, no matter how egregious the fact patterns or judicial activism that may have led to their outcomes, will never reach the Supreme Court. And anti-gun lawmakers and public officials have reacted to Bruen with a coordinated campaign of non-compliance, enacting one brazenly unconstitutional law, rule and policy after another. These lower-court appointments are a firewall against the worst of these abuses. Again, unlike after Heller and McDonald—which were misread, misapplied or simply ignored by activist judges—a number of gun-control laws have suffered poorly in court after Bruen. This is due in part to Trump’s appointments and to Bruen’s explicit standard of review, which makes it more difficult for politically minded judges to maneuver around that decision.
One thing that did not happen during the Trump presidency was congressional gun control. While this was partly because anti-gun majorities were never able to gain control of the entire Congress, the White House had also set a tone that infringements of the Second Amendment were off the table.
Biden’s media collaborators know that every gun owner who fails to cast a vote in effect supports Joe Biden.
During the Biden presidency, on the other hand, even a pro-gun majority in the Senate did not stop the misnamed Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), the most consequential federal gun-control law to pass since Bill Clinton was in office. Gun-control activists were successful in exploiting tragic episodes of mass violence to put pro-gun lawmakers on the defensive. Without a strong pro-gun president in the White House to buttress the caucus, several senators buckled under the pressure. Now some of those senators are claiming buyer’s remorse, as the Biden administration pushes the BSCA to the limit, and beyond, to pursue its anti-gun agenda.
In addressing the crowd at the NRA’s Leadership Forum in Dallas during NRA’s Annual Meetings and Exhibits in May, Donald Trump promised to roll back the Biden administration’s anti-gun executive actions, including those perpetrated under the guise of implementing the BSCA. This includes ATF’s “zero-tolerance” policy of Federal Firearm Licensee oversight; its overreaching rules on pistol braces, 80% receivers, and private sales; a White House office dedicated to promoting gun control; and a Justice Department effort to promote state “red-flag laws;” to name just a few. Meanwhile, Trump’s signature commitment to border security will help staunch the flow of guns and drugs across the border with Mexico, which gun-control activists disingenuously use to bootstrap their calls for firearm bans here in the United States. A Trump White House could also end the Biden administration’s dragnet surveillance of firearm and gun-parts purchases, which uses credit-card companies and federal law-enforcement agencies to gather information on lawful and constitutionally protected activity.
When Trump had executive authority, on the other hand, he used it to protect the Second Amendment. One of the earliest pieces of legislation he signed was an act to repeal a rule promulgated by the Obama/Biden administration that would have led to millions of Social Security recipients losing their right to arms under a misreading of a statutory prohibition related to “mental defectives.” The Trump administration also passed a critical export-reform rule that helped U.S. gun companies compete for foreign business, strengthening that sector of our economy and ensuring more U.S. control of the international movement of arms. President Trump additionally unsigned the noxious United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, which would have involved the U.S. in global efforts to restrict access to guns by law-abiding civilians. Millions of acres of federal lands were opened to hunters and recreational shooters by the Trump Interior Department, and the Army Corps of Engineers began a rulemaking to repeal its longstanding firearms ban on the publicly accessible recreational lands it administers. Another rulemaking was initiated to prohibit federal agencies from using the tactics of Operation Choke Point to de-bank lawful businesses.
The Biden administration, unsurprisingly, reversed some of these gains and would undoubtably continue that effort in a second term.
Indeed, the politicization and weaponization of government have reached breathtaking levels under the Biden administration. Departments and agencies that once had the confidence of the American people and admiration of the Free World have tarnished their reputations by allowing themselves to be bent toward partisan political ends. There is no sadder example of this than the Justice Department’s attempt to see Trump sidelined from the campaign trail and even imprisoned, rather than competing on equal terms with Biden in a free and fair election. Meanwhile, the White House has been leaning on technology and media companies to censor information unfavorable to Joe Biden and his policies, much as they suppressed evidence of the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election.
The demoralizing effects of these abuses on ordinary Americans are obvious, as is the underlying threat: “If we can do it to Donald Trump, how much more easily could we do it to you?”
Of course, the mainstream media is trying to minimize or rewrite the history of President’s Trump support for the Second Amendment while he was in office. This merely reinforces the importance of gun owners’ votes in the 2024 election. Biden’s media collaborators know that every gun owner who fails to cast a vote in effect supports Joe Biden. Non-participation benefits the status quo.
We at the NRA, on the other hand, have a long memory. We know our rights were never more secure than they were under the Trump presidency. That’s why we say now: Vote to save the Second Amendment. Elect Donald J. Trump to the White House in 2024 to preserve your rights for this generation and for generations to come.
