President Trump has long been an advocate of our Second Amendment Rights, but the incumbent is stepping things up a notch—making it a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign.
“If the left gains power, they will … confiscate your guns and appoint justices who will wipe away your Second Amendment and other constitutional freedoms,” Trump said during his speech on the closing night of the Republican National Convention (RNC). “We will … defend your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. And if we don't win, your Second Amendment doesn't have a chance. I can tell you that. I have totally protected it.”
Indeed, his championing of this constitutional right stands in stark contrast to the Biden-Harris ticket, which varies from the presidential contender's promoting further gun-control laws and non-viable “smart-gun mandates,” to allusions to buyback schemes and potential confiscation.
And just to make the distinction as explicit as possible, at a campaign event in Pennsylvania—Biden’s birthplace—hours before his opponent took the podium to accept the Democratic nomination, Trump talked about “mayhem” that could spread under Biden’s leadership, and then Trump again vowed to protect our right to keep and bear arms.
Andrew Pollack, whose daughter was murdered in Parkland after various levels of government failed to stop the killer again and again, also took to the stage on the opening night of the RNC. Pollack backed Trump’s Second Amendment stance and blasted the Obama-Biden era policies that left his own child at the mercy of a murderer.
But hints that gun rights were going to be a glaring focal point of Trump's 2020 messaging emerged even before the nation was pulled into the unfamiliar terrain of a pandemic.
Trump has repeatedly pointed to Virginia as a prime example of what happens when liberal-progressives gain power. He has routinely cautioned supporters at rallies that what happens in one state does not always stay in one state.
At a campaign event in Iowa earlier this year, Trump spent a good portion of his speech on what happened in Virginia, where anti-gun extremists captured control of both houses of the legislature and, subsequently, pushed a spate of gun-control mandates.
“In the state of Virginia they want to take your guns away, can you believe it?” Trump said. “I love Virginia. Of all states, they want to take your guns away. The Democrats. Not going to happen.”
Similarly, in New Jersey a few weeks earlier, Trump offered the sobering forecast that Virginia’s sweeping gun bills were “just the beginning” if they gain power; he later echoed this point to a crowd in New Hampshire, and assured that he and his team would “protect your Second Amendment.”
Contrasting the anti-gun message of blaming law-biding gun owners for violent crime, President Trump has pointed to the lack of mental-health services and institutions across the country as being part of the problem, and he has insisted that “there is a mental-illness problem that has to be dealt with.”
The president has pointed to the need for “proper care” of those suffering, and assured crowds that his administration is continuing to “tackle gun violence by building new [mental-health] facilities.”
“We will always uphold the right to self-defense, and we will always uphold the Second Amendment,” he said.
According to campaign insiders, Trump’s embrace of the Second Amendment mantle is of particular importance in rural regions and swing states.
“Take away your guns, take away your Second Amendment,” Trump said, referring to the Biden agenda, while on the tarmac at Cleveland airport in early August.
“He’s against guns..”
Trump certainly isn’t wavering from his solid Second Amendment pitch to let the many millions who now see, more than ever, just how important our right to individual freedom and personal protection truly is, that he will protect their freedom, whereas Joe Biden would take it away.
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