In the video below, a “comedian” does the redneck gun owner thing. Before descending into uncontrolled laughter [/sarc], notice the introductory glimpse of a Trump wife beater T-shirt (above). This stereotypical appeal to the elitists favoring gun control demonstrates that the post-Trump gun rights battleground remains the same. Of course things have changed . . .

For one thing, Hillary Clinton isn’t president. So expanded federal gun control isn’t a thing. For another, we have a conservative Justice on the Supreme Court. And that ain’t hay.

But now, with silencer deregulation and national reciprocity emerging from their Congressional committees, heading to the Senate, will President Trump weigh-in to help get these crucial bills to his desk?

In other words, Donald Trump [still] a gun rights champion? if so, what are the odds of him being an effective gun rights champion for the legislative battle ahead?

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79 COMMENTS

  1. Trump played single issue voters like a fiddle. Just one of the many ways Trump conned the American public.

    You’re a mark and you don’t want to admit it.

    • I agree. Really the majority of the GOP is two-faced. The HPA didn’t move from a conservative controlled sub-committee for nearly 6 months. Thankfully it’s been adopted by another Act and is finally moving, but I still have my reservations. I don’t think he’s done anything to help that much either. (Still hoping).

    • Hillary was very open about her opinion that the Supreme Court was wrong in Heller and that she would ban “assault weapons”.

      That guaranteed my vote for Trump, and would have even if she wasn’t so loathsome, crooked, stupid, dishonest, and smelly.

    • Con man vs. Would be Tyrant. A tyrant with her claws so deep inside Washington’s hide she couldn’t get as much as a traffic ticket for her incompetence and hubris.

      Pretty easy con job considering the alternative.

    • Yeah, maybe so, but at the end of the day, you and your ilk are extremely unhappy…

      And that really is good enough for me.

      • Come on. Rammerjammer has a real good point. Trump totally tricked us into believing he wasn’t Hillary Clinton and would put someone like Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. We were fools to believe he would be/do those things that he is/did.

    • Yeah. I’m real upset that I’m not knee deep in blood right now due to the second civil war Hillary started. There’s an alternate universe right next to ours, where at this very moment alternate versions of us are dying by the tens of thousands across the nation.

  2. No, he’s not and he never was.

    What he was, was the lesser of two evils. In my opinion, of course. And not just on gun rights, but a whole host of issues and attitudes.

    And wow, what does it say when the best thing you can say about your candidate is “well, at least it’s not XXX…”

    • President Trump has already struck down a few of Obama’s Executive Orders involving guns. Thati s littearly way more than any modern republican has done at at least 30 years.

      Is he a ‘champion’? I don’t know. But he’s already acted positively in this, which means you loose the argument already.

      • I wasn’t looking for an argument. (Nor for abuse
        … 😉

        Robert loosed the question, I merely responded with my opinion. I hope I’m wrong, and he turns out to be one; but we’ll need to wait until after he leaves office to know for certain whether the actions he’s taken are those of a champion, or of a pragmatist.

    • The lesser of two evils pretty much sums it up. Trump mailed me a survey asking me to prioritize his top 20 or so issues. Nothing related to gun rights were even in the list.

  3. WTF is that message box up above that I accidentally used, and where did my intended comment for here go to when I entered it up there?

    Anyway, stopping President Hillary Rodham Clinton makes The Donald a gun rights hero in and of itself.

    But I’d rather see some concrete action.
    Expecting Repugnant Party Congresscritters to make themselves useful is like expecting teats to make themselves useful on a boar, but he could do SOMETHING for us without their help if he wanted to.

    Administratively, he could via executive actions repeal some anti gun EAs from his predecessors, like George Herbert Wanking Bush’s military rifle import ban, and he could administratively clean up the ATF’s rules on what constitutes armor piercing handgun ammo (hint: 7.62×39 is not handgun ammo).

    • “WTF is that message box up above that I accidentally used, and where did my intended comment for here go to when I entered it up there?”

      That is really *weird* TTAG has a comment box at the top and bottom of the page now.

      TAG HQ *is* in Austin, so maybe they are doing their part to “Keep Austin Weird”…

    • The first ‘comment box’ is a direct drop to an NSA database. But don’t worry, they’re only collecting meta-data on people. They don’t care what we’re saying they just want to know who we are and who we’re talking to for… later.

      • The government’s professional snoops cannot be trusted. I’d bet even the mass graves they have in mind for us will still have personally identifiable information.

  4. I think Trump is profoundly ambivalent. Worse(FAR worse) are the RINOS in Congress & the Senate. If anyone has noticed Donnie’s plate is full of crises. And I believe in my heart of hearts he is destined to be a one term wonder-or less…WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO FIX COMMENTING?!?

    • He’s already acted in a pro-2A manor by striking down some of Obama’s illegal EA. What more do you want him to do? Tattoo an NRA logon on his face and spend then next 8 years passing fully focused on guns?

      • Remember the “On day 1, no more Gun Free Zones” speech from 2016?
        Well, I do, and that makes him a liar who cannot be trusted to follow through.
        Did I vote for him? Yes, but as a gun store owner, he has not been a “Champion”…
        And this F’n problem of posting replies sucks. Still.

        • The GFSZA was an act of Congress and can’t be overturned by an EO. It has been ruled on by several circuit courts as Constitutional, although no case has made it to the Supreme Court.

          The President has really had his hands full since day one fighting the demoncrats as well as the main stream Republicans. While gun free zones are a concern, there are several issues that need to be resolved or solved (ACA, PDRK, tax reform, deficient, etc) that are a lot more important.

          Over turning GFSZA will have to be done by Congress or SCOTUS.

      • FYI: They’re called EO’s (Executive Orders) and not EA’s (Executive Actions?)

  5. “Donald Trump [still] a gun rights champion?” More so than any president since gun control became a thing, but I wouldn’t really describe any of his actions as president as “championing gun rights.” The executive has a great deal of room in enforcing Title 18. Most federal gun control is regulatory and not statutory.

    “what are the odds of him being an effective gun rights champion for the legislative battle ahead?” Slim.

  6. I don’t know what President Trump really believes, nor does anyone else but his first S.C.O.T.U.S. pick is very encouraging.

  7. The problem with the executive action train that you guys always seem to dive into is that it is a profoundly limited method of achieving goals because the first democrap to replace Trump can simply reverse his reversal. Laws are harder to undo. Learn patience for goodness sake.

    • A democrat couldn’t undo the registration of newly made machine guns done under the registration amnesties Trump could order.

      The point isn’t that executive action is best. The point is that a “gun rights champion” would have done them while we wait on legislation that isn’t likely to get to his desk.

      • I concur 100% (!ANAL)
        I voted Trump for the SCOTUS pick. And while any other gunny benefits are gravy and very much appreciated, it seems that the amnesty is easily doable.

        • And the amnesty thing is just one example. To give him credit for what he has done, Trump is making slow progress through a lot of the regs. Stuff has been done by the Sec. of the Interior. The State Dept. is supposedly working on ITAR stuff. There were those two bills overturning the Social Security and military NICS reporting. The thing is, all of that and more should have been done in the first six months.

          He is the best president we’ve had on the 2A, but I would say he was a strong 2A supporter.

      • If Trump had understood the legislative process (which he still doesn’t), we would have had laws passed by now. The trouble is, like Obama, he thinks he can do it all by himself without Congress

  8. Trump is working on slackened ITAR rules for export (apart from Congress as he does essentially run the POS State Dept.). If that’s just sucking up to (“the gun”) industry, I don’t know if I’d call myself offended.

  9. Is the video supposed to be funny?

    I would say with Trump’s SCOTUS pick he is about pro-gun as we’re going to get.

    Just one more would secure the court’s stance for a generation. Hopefully the court will reign in the 4th Circuit too.

    Ginsburg was seen with an I.V and dragging around an O2 tank. Just wish she would go already and not die on the Bench. J/K about the I.V, but I’m sure she’s close.

    • Ginsberg’s seat has really been vacant for years, but her reanimated corpse just keeps walking around and mumbling and voting with the liberal wing.

      • So, like every election cycle when the dead rise up and send in their absentee ballots?

        You know, for a politico ideology that disposes organized religion the left is awfully good at resurrecting the dead every couple of years. Either that or there is a USPS office in whatever afterlife the left doesn’t believe in.

        • That’s my second greatest fear regarding my eventual demise. My first being whether my wife will sell my guns for what I told her I paid for them.

    • I imagine that they will give her baby blood transfusions and every life extension measure possible. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a replica under construction:-)

  11. Trump may or may not be a gun rights champion, but we KNOW that Hillary Clinton said that SCOTUS was wrong in Heller vc DC and that she would reinstate the AWB.

    Hillary’s hostility to the 2A guaranteed my vote for Trump. Even if Hillary were honest, authentic, ethical, law abiding, competent, made good decisions, and smelled like she uses soap, I still would have voted for Trump.

    We do know that Trump’s SCOTUS appointee is solid.

  12. I do think that little N. Korean sh&t is more on Trump’s mind. But, I think the Bills will be passed, and they will wind up on Trump’s desk. He will take a moment to sign them.
    Any American pro gun message would scare the N. Korean.

  13. I’d call Trump pro-gun, but I wouldn’t call him a champion. That said, when compared to Obama and Hillary, he’s the most pro gun president we’ve ever had. The SC seat and Secretary of the Interior are pro gun champions and Trump put them in place. But do I think Trump really cares about gun rights that much? Naw.

    • A genuine, 2A champion in the WH would have been Ted Cruz had he been elected. No one is more pro-gun that he is.

  14. AYFKM?

    Have you seen his swift moves to restock the federal judiciary??

    There’s literally no more consequential move to do than attack the judges and judiciary that have chipped away the 2nd amendment for a century.

    Legislation is congress’ deal; at this point if Trump supported gun rights efforts it would be more a bane than a boon.

    Ryan and McConnell and likely Murkowski and the other wobbly senator from the NorthEast+ McCain are the issues here.

    If we get flake out AND manage to replace McCain, we’re in fine shape.

    I’m in California, NO ONE wants gun rights more than I do; but not only does this stuff take time, it takes timing. Nothing would move anyway, and it would be saddled with “we already tried that, move on to something new” baggage if we did.

    Read up on how furiously Trump is trying to appoint new judges. And sip some bourbon. This is a long fight, and Trump is backdooring the most consequential stuff, and then after we restock then we go for legislation which won’t then immediately end up gutted like all the other controversial policies.

    Finally, compared to who? Reagan was the “best” champion of gun rights since Kennedy, and signed FOPA which had the long term effects of banning new manufacture of machine guns for civilians, no long term positive effects for it’s primary purpose, and later became a shill for “reasonable” gun control after Brady and getting shot.

    If Trump is better than the saint Reagan who I wasn’t cognizant for, and obviously better than Carter who looked into banning handguns, Nixon who was a squish on such things, then we’re going back to friggin’ Kennedy who had his melon perforated for challenging the deep state too much (or not; but very plausibly).

    I think we’re doing just fine.

    Use this time to build further grassroots- real ones that won’t get coopted like the tea party did- and primary the useless bastards out of states; get involved in out of state campagins, donate or call for the Roy Moore election in Alabama, etc.

    We got this. Take a deep breath. This is a long time coming, but also a lot of work to do, and proper timing necessary.

    • I basically agree with you with the exception that I don’t want to wait 83 years to get back to where we were before Roosevelt the Awful.

    • Ronnie was already a shill for gun control after he saw “negroes with guns” in Sacramento, as governor.
      He also closed down mental institutions leaving us with a homeless problem that will never go away.
      He was always a 2nd rate actor, but he did his best acting while in office.

      • Reagan was the greatest President that this country has ever had in the 20th Century. Instead of blindly taking shots at him, maybe you morons ought to do a little research about his actual; accomplishments while in office and how they changed America and the world for the better.

  15. We were given a choice between BAD and BADder. It could be worse. I’ll take what I can get. Let’s just hope he remembers us through this term in hopes of being re-elected. We need more on SCOTUS and that may take more than 4 years.

  16. I guess that to me the real question is “Was Trump ever a gun rights champion?”

    I’d have to say “No, not really”.

    IMHO, when it comes to gun rights picking Trump over Clinton is a bit like exploring the Mines of Moria and choosing Samwise Gamgee as your partner as opposed to picking a Cave Troll. He’s not the best guy you could pick but at least he ain’t the Troll.

    Personally I don’t remember Trump campaigning hard on the 2A. I remember him saying he wouldn’t attack it while Clinton said she would attack the hell out of that Amendment. So far as I can tell a lot of the folks who thought that Trump would be a warrior for the 2A were projecting their wishes on to him.

    I’d like to see some of the stuff, particularly the HPA, pass and become law. Will Trump throw his weight behind these bills? I have no idea. Either way, they’re not front burner issues and they never were. Those that thought they would/should be were deluding themselves. There are bigger fish to fry from the GOP/Trump perspective and until those things are done in some fashion 2A issues that we all love will continue to be second fiddle.

    But hey, at least we didn’t end up having to run up a chain Elf-Ninja style to put arrows into the base of a Troll’s skull!

      • The life of? Nah. But my inner nerd allowed me to write a decent article for TTAG on that event without wanting to punch half of those in attendance….

    • “There are bigger fish to fry from the GOP/Trump perspective and until those things are done in some fashion 2A issues that we all love will continue to be second fiddle.” – So never?

      Liked how you did your LOTR analogy.

      • I wouldn’t say never but I would point out that the GOP, particularly in the Senate is in disarray at this point.

        Regardless of Trump’s campaign promises and his preferred agenda the “big three” for the GOP right now are 1) Immigration Reform, 2) Tax Reform and 3) ACA Repeal/Replace. Once those are done other things will get serious consideration but at this point no one up for election next time around (remember next year is campaign season yet again) wants to explain why they’re focused on the HPA to the exclusion of the things that really fire up the base and affect the most people nationwide.

        That’s not to say that these 2A issues could be pursued concurrently, a tactic I would whole-heartedly endorse, but I wouldn’t expect them to become anything past tertiary issues at this point.

        Like I said, the GOP is in disarray at this point and really has no direction. Just yesterday the MSM was talking about the “improved chances” for the current ACA Repeal & Replace bill. Today they’re saying John McCain scuttled it. I don’t know if the information about McCain is necessarily correct but what I do know is that Congresscritters pay attention to the MSM in a way that makes some of what the media says a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  17. If he started repealing pre-Obama gun regulation, then yes, he would be a champion. Simply moving the slider (slowly) back to the early Obama years is really just status-quo.

    • Not so fast, chief. You may not be old enough to remember it, but there was a time from 1994-on to sometime during the Bush II regime where “assault weapons” were banned. CCW permits weren’t all that common. Things are better now than they were then. Hillary wanted to go back to the gun control regime of her husband-in-name-only, Bill “the rapist” Clinton.

      However, we need to make them much, much “betterer”.

      I should be able to CC in NYC, California, and everyplace in-between.

      I should be able to buy a suppressor like buying any other accessory such as a red dot.

      I should be allowed to carry on college campi.

      Because I am an American who is supposed to be FREE.

      • You should be able to buy a gun like you do a red dot. My grandfather bought his guns through the mail because he didn’t want anyone knowing his business. (I’m not sure how that prevented people from knowing his business).

  18. My bet is that President Trump will sign National Concealed Carry Reciprocity if it reaches his desk. I will also bet that prior to being elected Trump possessed BOTH a N.Y. AND a N.J. Concealed Carry Permit (he does own homes in both states) but we will NEVER know because states, dominated by tyrants belonging to the Democratic Party, won’t release the names of CCW permit carriers for fear we, the public, will see how many of their high dollar campaign contributors and close friends/family members have obtained the permits while they denied us, the “regular” law-abiding citizens, the same protections. Usually I’m all against releasing names of Concealed Carriers but in case of “Liberal/Progressive” states I would like to know just who were deemed to have demonstrated a “justifiable need” required to obtain one of these “Golden Tickets”.

  19. Champion NO. Supporter maybe to a degree.
    But Hitlery no way.
    At this point my main concern is the Supreme Court and where it ends up.
    Donald, and I wont live long enough to see it written.
    Will just end up a foot note of the absurd in Presidential history.

  20. I did not vote for Trump for a gun rights agenda. I voted for him for his legal agenda. That is, appointing more conservative SCOTUS. He’s appointed one already. If he appoints one more he will have done everything I wanted him to do. If he gets 3 to SCOTUS, California will fall into the ocean.

  22. Progun/gun friendly? Definitely. Champion? No. Other than at NRA, he really doesn’t talk about guns or push for gun rights. He doesn’t cajole Congress for not passing HPA/carry reciprocity/anything progun. He’ll sign them if they get to him, but he doesn’t seem to be taking proactive actions to get them done.

  24. My observation is that DJTrump has become very much more knowledgeable on civil rights, including gun rights, than in the past. That said, I doubt that he prioritizes it as much as most of us.

  25. Donald Trump is a champion of guns rights.
    1. Neil Gorsuch 2. Potentially 1-2 more Supreme Court Justices. 3. He isn’t Hillary. 4. His son’s are very pro gun. 5. HPA /SHARE Act is actually being considered. HPA wouldn’t even have been introduced if anyone else was president. Putting Neal Gorsuch on the Supreme Court did more for your gun rights than anything in the last 10 years. Corrupt courts all across the country now realize it’s a terrible idea to elevate 2nd Amendment challenges to the Supreme Court.

    So let’s look at this logically… It’s less than 9 months into his presidency, give him time.. He is currently dealing with Liberal turds, Republican cucks, 3 Hurricanes, North Korea, fake Russian Hacking story, Iran, The Media, The Hollywood Establishment, the New World Order, Obamacare repeal, Fake news etc. etc…. Everybody take a breath and thank god that Hillary has been relegated to the trash heap of history.

    2018 could be a huge year for Gun rights. If the Republicans are able to gain a super-majority after the mid-terms, and then nothing is done then we can begin to grow impatient. 2020 will be even bigger, if Trump can regain the White House then it’s highly likely he gets to pick 3 Justices during his term.. This would be a huge and multi-generational change to the court.

  26. I don’t think he cares. He gives guns the nod because it’s convenient, but he’ll flip in a second if that’s ever the easy thing to do. At least he appointed a good Supreme Court justice, and he’s certainly not a dedicated anti like Hilary is.

  27. Trump is scum, supported by scum and Russians. That is all there is to it. Anyone who still supports him has to have a mental illness.

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