Trump Tells NRA He'll Fight for Gun Rights

President Donald Trump vowed to fight for gun rights as he addressed the National Rifle Association on Friday and implored members of the group — struggling to maintain its influence — to rally behind his re-election bid.

Speaking to the group for his third straight year, Trump declared himself a “champion for the Second Amendment.”

“It’s under assault,” he said of the constitutional right to bear arms. “But not while we’re here.”

And he told the thousands in the crowd: “You better get out there and vote,” saying of the 2020 election, “It seems like it’s a long ways away. It’s not.”

The nation’s largest gun rights organization was pivotal to Trump’s victory in 2016. But three years later, the group is limping toward the next election divided and diminished.

It’s a reversal that has stunned longtime observers and gun control advocates and raises questions about the one-time kingmaker’s clout heading into 2020 as Trump and Vice President Mike Pence headline the group’s annual convention in Indianapolis on Friday.

“I’ve never seen the NRA this vulnerable” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit that advocates for gun control measures.

In the months after Trump’s election, the NRA seemed on top of the world. After pouring tens of millions of dollars into the presidential race, its dark horse candidate occupied the desk in the Oval Office. Republicans controlled both branches of Congress. And the emboldened group had ambitious plans for easing state and national gun regulations.

Instead, much of the legislation the group championed has stalled, due, in part, to a series of mass shootings, including the massacre at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead and launched a youth movement against gun violence that has had a powerful impact.

At the same time, the group is grappling with infighting, bleeding money and facing a series of investigations into its operating practices, including allegations that covert Russian agents seeking to influence the 2016 election courted its officials and funneled money through the group.

As Trump landed in Indianapolis, a judge imposed an 18-month prison term on gun rights activist Maria Butina, an admitted Russian agent who tried to infiltrate American conservative groups.

And then there’s the simple fact that, with Trump in office, gun owners no longer fear the Second Amendment is under attack.

“Good times are never good for interest groups because it’s much better when Armageddon is at your doorstep,” said Harry Wilson, a Roanoke College professor who has written extensively on gun politics. “Fear is a huge motivator in politics.”

The NRA, said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and expert on gun policy, has also dramatically changed its messaging over the last two years, with its NRATV service advocating a panoply of far-right political views that have turned off some members.

At the same time, public sentiment has shifted. A March AP-NORC poll found that 67% of Americans overall think gun laws should be made stricter — up from 61% in October 2017.

And a June 2018 Gallup poll found overall favorable opinions of the NRA down slightly from October 2015, from 58% to 53%. Unfavorable views have grown, from 35% to 42%.

Views of the NRA have also become increasingly partisan over decades of Gallup polling, and in the last few years as well. In 2018, just 24% of Democrats had a favorable opinion. Favorable views among Republicans in 2018 were at a record high, Gallup found.

Against that backdrop, Democratic politicians have become more comfortable assailing — and even actively running against — the NRA and pledging action to curb gun violence. And gun control groups like Everytown, which is largely financed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and a political action committee formed by Gabby Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman wounded in a shooting, have become better organized and more visible, especially at the state level.

That reversal was made clear during the 2018 midterm elections, when those groups vastly outspent the NRA .

During the midterms, the NRA “committed almost a disappearing act,” said Everytown’s Feinblatt.

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