Unintentionally underscoring Friday’s assertions by top National Rifle Association officials and President Donald Trump that the media is biased, reports from the NRA convention in Atlanta now wonder why the Second Amendment community is still fired up about gun control.
Perhaps that’s because, as the president observed, there have been eight years of attacks on the right to keep and bear arms. Gun rights activists say there have been decades of erosion of the Second Amendment.
With Trump in the White House, it’s time to start rolling that back and, as Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, has repeatedly challenged the new administration: “Make the Second Amendment great again.”
CNN Money reported:
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“But Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — the industry’s long-vilified boogeymen and the two best things ever to happen to gun sales — are off the scene. That leaves Trump and the NRA without the personalized perceived threats that for years have fueled their urgent call to arms.”
The threats are in existing laws that need to be amended or repealed, according to the tens of thousands of NRA members streaming into the Georgia World Congress Center this weekend.
Trump told an enthusiastic audience Friday that his administration “will work with the NRA to promote responsible gun ownership.” One major step in that direction would be adoption of laws to strengthen gun rights, and remove roadblocks to self-defense across state lines.
National reciprocity legislation has been introduced in Congress, and Trump has indicated support, but so far, the bill has not moved. Some in the gun rights community are getting impatient, perhaps erroneously convinced that everything would happen all at once without the typical Capitol Hill process.
Another example of subtle bias might be in the way an Atlanta Journal Constitution writer described Trump’s Friday speech:
“Trump tried to rev up conservatives who formed the backbone of his November victory.”
He didn’t have to “try” very hard. This was his crowd, and they were full of spirit as the president promised an end to federal agency assaults on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. They cheered as Trump declared the “eight year assault” on their rights that had been a constant worry during the Obama administration, has come to a “crashing end.”
They roared their approval when he promised that “radical Islamic terrorists” would no longer find an open door to the United States.
And they nearly brought down the house when the president observed, “Public officials must serve under the Constitution, not above it.”
Now is the time for Second Amendment activists to be on the offensive, it appears. And the convention center this weekend is filled with them.
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