The anti-gunners are reportedly shaking in their Second Amendment-hating boots at the prospect of former President Donald Trump serving another term in office.
Anti-gunner activists fear that if Trump wins the election, he will roll back the progress the Biden-Harris administration has made in restricting gun ownership, including the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BCSA) and the executive orders President Biden used to weaponize the ATF against gun owners.
“We are at a pivotal moment because we finally broke the back of the gun lobby in 2022,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told The Guardian, also noting that Congress “passed a significant piece of legislation. We are doing way more background checks.”
The lawmaker highlighted the importance of maintaining momentum in the fight against gun rights in light of the nation’s high rate of gun violence.
The BCSA expanded background checks for younger gun buyers and offered incentives to states to pass red flag laws. Proponents of the measure claim that it has helped to reduce violent crime, citing a three percent drop between 2022 and 2023.
However, a recent report revealed that violent crime has actually risen during that time period.
One of the leftists' fears about the Trump presidency is that he might dismantle the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which is currently led by Vice President Kamala Harris. The new agency was ostensibly formed to reduce gun violence, but it is likely nothing more than another way to push gun control.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, told The Guardian (linked above) that another Trump term “means that we can look forward to having to fight like hell to not lose the incredible progress that we’ve made.”
She referred to a Gallup poll from 2023 indicating that 56 percent of Americans support stricter regulations on firearms.
Trump has touted his support of gun rights on the campaign trail. During a speech at a National Rifle Association event earlier in 2024, he boasted that during his first term, “We did nothing. We didn’t yield.”
However, the Trump administration did ban bump stocks after the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting. However, Harris is objectively worse than Trump when it comes to gun rights.
Harris has attempted to appeal to both sides of the gun debate and has touted her status as a gun owner as proof that she does not want to seize people’s firearms. Yet, most of her policy proposals have been decidedly anti-gun. As I wrote:
During the presidential debate, Harris revealed to the world that she is a gun owner while responding to former President Donald Trump’s assertion that “she has a plan to confiscate everybody’s gun.”
Yet, less than one week after the debate, Harris wrote a post on X in which she argued that “Congress must renew the assault weapons ban.”
The Second Amendment will likely become a more prominent issue in political discourse regardless of which candidate wins in November. The anti-gunner lobby is pushing aggressively for more restrictions on firearms.
On the other side of the coin, gun rights advocates, buoyed by the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, have used lawfare to strike down several state and federal gun control laws.
The battle over gun rights will probably intensify after November as both sides work to persuade Americans to support their causes.