President Donald Trump wasn't supremely impressive on Second Amendment issues during his first term. He did a lot of good things, though he was stymied from doing others thanks to the bureaucracy, an activist judiciary, and the media, but gun rights weren't exactly his selling point. He was simply better than Joe Biden would ever be.
Now that he's back in office, though, he's much better on them. His administration isn't perfect, but it's done more for the Second Amendment than any other administration in my lifetime. And he's made some serious moves addressing violent crime in DC, too.
And over at America's 1st Freedom, NRA executive vice president and CEO Doug Hamlin celebrates Trump's efforts on violent crime.
Violent crime is too often tolerated by political leaders in our urban areas. Part of the reason for this is that anti-gun politicians, and many of the members of the media who support them, have decided that the individual horrors of these crimes are not worth mentioning until a crime story or statistic becomes particularly useful to them politically. At this point, they will passionately step in front of cameras and blame the Second Amendment, this nation’s law-abiding armed citizens and the NRA for the violence.
These politicians become puffed up with righteous indignation as they recite gun-control talking points. No personal accountability enters their rhetoric—not their support for cashless bail nor for reduced sentences for violent criminals nor their defund-the-police policies. They will not even admit that the gun-control laws they support disempower good citizens and turn them into easy victims for the criminals who ignore the law.
If it occurs to these politicians that there is blood on their hands, it is not voiced in their public proclamations. All that matters to them is what is politically useful—and a disarmed citizenry is an end that justifies their horrific means.
But then along came President Donald Trump (R), a politician who is willing to upend the disgusting lie that lawfully armed citizens are responsible for violent crime, and suddenly these anti-gun zealots have little to say.
Of course, as Hamlin notes, anti-gunners tried to claim that there wasn't really an issue in the District of Columbia in the first place, that there was no need for anything. That was a lie, as was laid bare many times amid that debate.
Among the things Trump did was focus on criminals, not legally armed residents of the district. Lawful gun owners were never the problem, so expending resources going after them was stupid.
As a result of that, things changed, and a lot of anti-gunners, including DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, are acknowledging that violent crime is, in fact, dropping. He then finishes up with this:
Your NRA, being the force of good it is, has always supported law and order—and we stand opposed to scapegoating the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. Indeed, the more people who join this association, the more sway we have together to push for good policies that save lives and empower good citizens, such as what the Trump administration is accomplishing in D.C.
The NRA ostensibly works to essentially create the same environment we're seeing yield results in DC for the rest of the nation. However, along the way, they kind of got lost due to some poor leadership that was more worried about their lifestyle than the right to keep and bear arms. They're working to win back that trust, and celebrating how Trump has changed things in DC, thus creating a template for the rest of the United States, is just one small dose of what we need from them.
What's needed next are deeds, not words. The NRA needs to follow through and do more than applaud the president.
Luckily, with the reformation effort underway among newer board members and general membership, that seems to be what will happen going forward.
If you walked away in the past, I'm going to urge you to reconsider that. The NRA answers to its members, and if you're not in its ranks, it doesn't answer to you. Join and hold them accountable, just as you should with any other Second Amendment group you care to name.
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