It starts primarily with the headline, "Second Amendment enthusiast Trump has little new to say on guns."

Now, Trump is hardly a "Second Amendment enthusiast." He's a much, much better option on the Second Amendment than his opponent, to be sure--that's not difficult, though--but while he says all the right things on guns and gun rights, he's also the guy who directed the ATF to reclassify bump stocks as machine guns. That's not exactly something a "Second Amendment enthusiast" would do.

It's just pretty good on guns. That's it.

Yet a headline is just a headline. Maybe the body of the piece is much better.

Public opinion polling about American gun laws is nuanced, but majorities have favored stricter measures since 2015 in Gallup polling. That consensus, however, has yet to result in meaningful legislation addressing any facet of America's epidemic of gun violence, nor has it led either the Democratic or Republican nominee for president to focus on the issue in the 2024 election. The GOP nominee, former President Donald Trump, has not released many formal plans to alter gun laws in the United States, and so his positions on the matter mostly have to be inferred from statements and past policy decisions.

Will Trump be a defender of gun owners' rights?

The word "guns" does not appear in Trump's "Plan to End Crime and Restore Law and Order" page on his campaign's "Agenda 47" policy package. That is likely because he and most Republican lawmakers do not believe that curtailing access to guns will have any meaningful impact on crime rates or the country's mass shooting problem. The Agenda 47 page does promise that as president, Trump would "sign concealed carry reciprocity legislation," referencing a bill that passed the House in 2017; this would force states that currently prohibit individuals from carrying concealed firearms to allow anyone with a valid concealed carry permit to do so.

Trump has occasionally addressed the issue of gun rights in public settings. During his administration, "there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing," he said to a gathering of National Rifle Association (NRA) members in February 2024. "Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president," Trump said. While accepting the endorsement of the NRA on May 18, 2024, Trump said that the Second Amendment is "very much on the ballot" in this year's election. Those comments mean that Trump has not modified his past opposition to a ban on assault weapons or strengthening background check procedures for potential gun buyers.

Nope. It's not.

This part isn't as awful, but it's predicated on the idea that somehow, polling should somehow supersede the Constitution on things like guns. That's a horrific precedent to set.

Later, the piece gets into school shootings, noting that Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance, argued that we needed improved school security, including better technology on locks and windows so would-be killers couldn't access classrooms in the first place. The writer added, "The campaign has not released a specific proposal to strengthen windows and doors in the more than 95,000 public schools in the country."

No, it probably hasn't. Then again, Kamala Harris is notorious for not having specific proposals throughout most of her campaign. Trump and Vance have.

But not having a specific proposal doesn't negate the argument in any way.

There's a reason, though, that Trump isn't trotting out gun control, and it's not his supreme love for the Second Amendment. He's good on the issue, all things considered, but that owes more to the fact that he understands that gun control doesn't actually fix anything. That's something no one from The Week is capable of understanding no matter how we spell it out to them.