Trump promises NRA he’ll repeal rules designed to prevent school shootings

Former President Donald Trump accepted an endorsement from the National Rifle Association on May 18 and promised the group that he will roll back gun safety rules if he wins back the White House. 

In a more than 90-minute address at the NRA’s annual meeting in Dallas, Trump attacked President Joe Biden for his efforts to keep firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals and to curb mass school shootings. 

“In my second term, we will roll back every Biden attack on the Second Amendment, attacks are fast and furious, starting the minute that Crooked Joe shuffles his way out of the White House,” Trump promised. “At noon on Inauguration Day, we will sack the anti-gun fanatic Steve Dettelbach, have you ever heard of him? He’s a disaster. And replace him with an ATF director who respects the sacred rights to keep and bear arms. And remember, every single thing I told you, I did.” 

While Trump kept his 2016 promises to the NRA, he broke promises he made to the American people following mass shootings in 2019 in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas. At the time, he endorsed universal background checks for gun purchases as well as red flag laws to temporarily confiscate firearms from those judged to be an imminent danger to themselves or others. After NRA officials complained, Trump backed down and said there were already “a lot of background checks.”

Trump complained in his latest speech that the Biden administration is enforcing the laws on the books, saying, “As we speak, the Biden administration is trying to crush independent firearms dealers by revoking their licenses if they make a single error, even in very unimportant paperwork.” (27::25) He argued that the administration wants to take away his rights by prosecuting him for his alleged crimes and complained that he has been indicted more times than Prohibition-era gangster Al Capone.

In the aftermath of the mass shootings in 2021 at an Oxford, Michigan, high school and in 2022 at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, Biden called for commonsense gun laws to prevent future tragedies. Though Republicans in Congress repeatedly blocked proposals to require universal background checks and other gun safety measures, in June 2022, Biden signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a compromise bill that expanded background checks for gun purchasers under age 21, tightened restrictions of gun ownership by domestic abusers, and assisted states that voluntarily enact red flag laws. The NRA opposed the law. Biden has used executive actions to implement the law and curb gun violence.

Democratic Sen. Bob Casey and every Democratic member of the Pennsylvania U.S. House delegation voted in favor of the 2022 compromise law that Trump wants to repeal, as did Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick. Republican Reps. John Joyce, Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, Lloyd Smucker, and Glenn Thompson all voted against it.

Dave McCormick, the Republican nominee challenging Casey this November, has a history of opposing gun safety legislation, including red flag laws and assault weapons bans. His 2024 campaign site does endorse “rigorous background check systems.”