The Republican National Committee may have removed almost every reference to the right to keep and bear arms from the 2024 party platform, but that doesn't mean that the party is moving towards gun control. As a pair of Reuters reporters on hand at the RNC in Milwaukee found out, delegates are still as firm as they've ever been when it comes to support of the Second Amendment.

Tim Reid and Helen Coster are supposed to be straight news reporters, but they couldn't help but inject a note of incredulity in their filing; how on earth could these delegates still oppose a ban on so-called assault weapons after their party leader was nearly killed by an assassin with an AR-15 last weekend? 

 Their presidential candidate had just narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, a bullet grazing his ear on Saturday from an AR-15-style semiautomatic weapon - a rifle frequently used by mass shooters in the United States. 

Yet in interviews with 12 Donald Trump delegates at his Republican Party nominating convention in Milwaukee, none advocated for limits or bans on assault rifles, raising the legal age to buy a gun, or even more robust background checks.

The delegates were dead set against any type of reform to America's gun laws.

Which is exactly the response I was hoping for.  

What kind of "reforms" would have stopped this attack from taking place? According to "familiar parties", the gun that was used in the assassination attempt was legally purchased more than a decade ago, so "universal" background checks and raising the age to purchase a long gun from 18 to 21 wouldn't have made a difference. 

What about banning the gun itself? Even a bolt-action rifle could have been used by the killer. The problem isn't the hardware, but the heart of the assassin... though there are serious questions about the response by authorities at the scene as well. 

Growing evidence that law enforcement were made aware of Crooks before he opened fire has put the Secret Service under pressure to explain what analysts have described as a major security failure. After Crooks fired on the rally, Trump was wounded, two members of the audience were injured and one was dead.

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle sent a memo to her agents Sunday praising their fast efforts to move Trump to safety after shots were fired. Also Sunday, President Biden said he had ordered an “independent review” of security at the rally. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Monday echoed that call for an independent investigation, calling the attempted assassination a security “failure.” 

Crooks began firing two minutes and two seconds after the starting point of the newly published video, which begins with a man’s voice saying that people were pointing toward the roof, according to a Washington Post analysis of footage from the event. The shots began 86 seconds after the first audible attempts to alert police, according to the analysis, which synchronized several clips based on the sound of Trump’s voice over the public address system as he addressed supporters at a farm show grounds in Butler County. 

If we want to "do something" in the wake of the assassination attempt, let's focus on fixing the security lapses that allowed this to happen. Neither Reid nor Coster should have been surprised that RNC delegates are sticking to their guns, so to speak. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump was a shocking and terrible moment for this country, but that doesn't mean that it should be used as an excuse to infringe on our civil liberties. 

More effective mental health services are the key to spotting potential shooters and getting them help before they carry out a gun crime, the delegates interviewed said.

"It's all about mental health," said Will Boone, a delegate from Montana. "The right to have a gun is enshrined in the Constitution. Once you start infringing on that, you'll start other rights being taken away."

Steve Kramer, from Georgia, said it was a "lie" that expanded background checks would help.

"If you look at most of the killings, someone stole the gun, so background checks wouldn't matter," Kramer said.

It certainly wouldn't have made a difference in Pennsylvania last weekend. But the media is fixated on the idea that the attempt on Trump's life should be a turning point in the gun control debate, with scales falling from Republican eyes as they embrace all of the anti-gun measures Democrats have been demanding for decades. 

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