Former President Donald Trump has vowed to remove all restrictions enacted by United States President, Joe Biden, on gun rights if re-elected.
Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 presidential race, said he firmly protected gun rights while in the White House.
Speaking to thousands of supporters at an event organized by the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday, February 9, 2024, Trump promised to rescind a rule curbing sales of gun accessories known as pistol braces and other regulations put in place by the Biden administration.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said in a speech at the Great American Outdoor show in Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania.
The NRA enthusiastically backed Trump during the 2016 race and throughout his administration, cheering him on as he appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court and adopted a series of steps sought by the influential gun lobby. These included designating firearm shops as essential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing them to stay open.
Seeing conservative gun owners as critical to his re-election chances, Trump has continued to court them aggressively.
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He told the crowd on Friday that if he is re-elected “no one will lay a finger on your firearms” and bragged about resisting pressure to implement gun restrictions during his term in the White House from 2017 to 2021.
“During my four years nothing happened, and there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing, we didn’t yield,” Reuters quoted Trump as saying.
Republicans, with the support of the NRA and other gun rights groups, largely oppose stricter laws, citing the right to bear arms established in the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment. That stance has remain fixed even in the face of a steady stream of mass shootings, and with the United States registering the highest rate of gun deaths among rich countries.
At Friday’s address, Trump’s eighth in front of an NRA crowd, he urged his supporters to “swamp” the polls in November, a recognition that he needs the battleground state he lost in 2020 if he wants to retake the White House.
Trump again on Friday raised questions about Biden’s mental acuity, the day after a Department of Justice special counsel report said Biden, 81, suffered from memory lapses, even as it concluded he should not be charged in a probe into his handling of classified documents.
The White House blasted that characterization and called the report “clearly politically motivated.”
Trump, 77, has his own history of gaffes, recently confusing Republican rival Nikki Haley with the former Democratic speaker of the House, occasionally appearing to slur his words and suggesting former Democratic President Barack Obama was still in office.
On Friday, Trump made a number of false or misleading statements, including the assertion that he had won Pennsylvania twice.
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