On Friday, President Donald Trump spoke at the NRA Annual Meetings. It was highly anticipated by attendees and was set to be heavily protested by the NoRA outrage mongers outside.

However, Gun Owners of America released a statement on Friday prior to the speech.

GOA Statement in Anticipation of Trump’s NRA Speech

Springfield, VA – Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) Erich Pratt stated the following in anticipation of President Donald Trump’s speech at the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting:

“After his election, President Trump told gun owners that, ‘The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end.’

“Gun owners breathed a sigh of relief when Hillary Clinton was defeated in the 2016 elections.  Her stated support for confiscation of firearms would have been disastrous for our country.

“But even with her defeat, the assault against our gun rights has not ended.  For example, the ATF’s proposed regulations banning bump stocks would make instant felons of law-abiding citizens who own one the day after the ban goes into effect.  Not only that, these regulations are written so expansively that a future anti-gun administration could easily use them to justify a ban on AR-15’s and other semi-automatic rifles.

“President Trump also signed gun control into law as part of the Omnibus spending bill in March.

“So while we are thankful that Trump put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and that he signed a bill to reverse Obama’s Social Security gun ban, we would ask the President to reverse himself on the proposed bump stock regulations — and urge him to press Congress to pass concealed carry reciprocity, to deregulate suppressors, and to stop banks from refusing loans and credit to gun makers and sellers.”

The bill GOA is referring to as the gun control law was the Fix NICS bill which many pro-gun individuals and organizations supported. Needless to say, the Gun Owners of America were not part of that group.

And I get their concerns.

However, to me, the most egregious lapse of the Trump administration is regulating bump stocks via the ATF rather than through Congress. It’s a gross overstep of their authority on the subject, since the requirements are clear and bump stocks do not violate the law.

Yet it’s also important to note that President Trump’s actions are entirely consistent with the positions of the National Rifle Association. The NRA supported the Fix NICS bill and a ban on bump stocks via regulation rather than legislation. From a political standpoint, that makes sense. If you want voters to think of you as pro-gun, standing with the NRA is a smart, easy way to do it.

That said, GOA presented a dream sheet of sorts, a collection of laws they’d love to see the Republican Congress and the president put into law. These are all laws that I think every gun rights activist can get behind, such as national reciprocity and the deregulation of suppressors. Further, the idea of banks’ position on guns is very troubling, so it would be nice to see President Trump weigh in on that.