‘No One Will Lay a Finger on Your Firearms’ If I’m Elected: Trump Promises NRA Members

Former President Donald J. Trump speaks at the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pa., on Feb. 9, 2024. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump vowed to protect the Second Amendment rights of Americans, promising that under his administration, the government would not seek to take away people’s firearms.

“For four incredible years, it was my honor to be the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House by far. Now, I stand before you with a very simple promise—your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your President. When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms. It’s not going to happen,” President Trump said at the National Rifle Association (NRA) Presidential Forum in Pennsylvania on Feb. 9.

He blamed the Democrat Biden administration for turning the United States into a “crime-ridden, gang-infested, terror-filled, dumping ground” while confiscating guns from Americans and violating their rights to self-defense.

During the four years of the Trump administration, it was different, he said. “And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing.” Yielding a little bit to gun control activists would only be the beginning of an “avalanche.”

“Four more years of [President] Joe Biden means four more years of anti-gun communists running the ATF. They’re going to run it. They’re already. They’re running it now, just in case you have any questions. But it means hundreds of more radical left judges waging a crusade against law-abiding gun owners,” President Trump said, referring to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

“And four more years of Joe Biden means a nonstop war on gun makers, dealers, and sellers, designed to put the entire industry right out of business,” he said.

The former president insisted that the “only thing” standing between Americans and the obliteration of their Second Amendment rights was him. “I’m the only thing … If Joe Biden is reelected, your gun rights will be gone.”

“The sad part of that is the bad guys aren’t giving up their guns. ... But the good people aren’t giving up their guns either. Because there’s never going to be anybody that’s going to be asking for your gun. And when I’m reelected, every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day.”

President Trump pointed out that in his first term in office, he appointed nearly “300 pro-constitution judges to interpret the law as written.” In 2019, the former president revoked America’s signature from the “globalist United Nations arms trade treaty where basically they take your guns.”

“They said, ‘you can’t do that, sir. All countries are signing that.’ Well, number one, all countries didn’t sign. And most of the countries that signed didn’t adhere to it anyway. But we would have. I said, ‘no, we’re not doing it.’ Even the NRA officers were surprised at that one,” President Trump stated.

“I stood up for our hunters, fishers, and sportsmen like no one has ever done before, opening up millions and millions of acres of federal land and rolling back [former President Barack] Obama’s assault on hunting, fishing, trapping, and ammunition.”

Biden’s Gun Policies

In his speech, President Trump also highlighted the current Biden administration’s “vicious zero-tolerance policy.” The policy was announced back in 2021 and is related to the revocation of firearm seller licenses.

According to ATF documents, “revocation is the assumed action” for a firearm seller found violating any rule deemed to greatly affect public safety or the agency’s ability to trace firearms recovered in violent crimes.

Speaking to the crowd, President Trump said that the policy “revokes the license of independent firearms dealers if they make a single minor error, little tiny error, they’re out of business.”

He also criticized the federal administration’s “so-called pistol-brace rule, which orders law-abiding citizens to register or surrender guns with certain equipment.”

The pistol brace rule from the ATF was supposed to come into effect after May 31 last year. The regulation aimed to make the possession of pistol stabilizing braces a felony.

Gun owners who did not destroy, surrender, or register their braces with the government by May 31 were deemed to be possessing contraband and thus subject to arrest. A legal battle on the issue is ongoing.

In December, a federal judge from Texas issued a nationwide stay against the ATF rule. However, a federal appeals court last month declined to pause the regulation.

“Biden is trying to ban all private gun transfers in the United States with the stroke of a pen,” President Trump told the crowd in Pennsylvania. “Under a Trump administration, all of those Biden disasters get ripped up and torn out. My first week, but maybe my first day in office.”

He said his administration would overhaul the Department of Justice “to clear out all the communists who have weaponized government activities and gone against conservatives and gun owners. And we will replace them with relentless crime fighters on a mission to put dangerous criminals behind bars.”

In March last year, President Biden signed an executive gun control measure “with the goal of increasing the number of background checks conducted before firearm sales.” The order also aimed to “strengthen efforts to hold the gun industry accountable.”

Last month, whistleblower group Empower Oversight Whistleblowers & Research revealed that the Biden administration has drafted a document mandating background checks for all gun sales, even in the case of transactions between two private individuals.

In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the group pointed out that the proposed rule is an overreach of executive branch power and “would also clearly violate the Second Amendment.”