Former President Donald Trump went after Vice President Kamala Harris on guns while burnishing his own credentials on Thursday.
During a lengthy press conference, Trump painted Harris as radical on guns. He painted himself as a protector of the Second Amendment. Those were his first remarks contrasting his position on gun control with Harris since she took over the top spot on the Democratic ticket a few weeks back.
Does that mean Trump has decided to change tact on gun politics as we barrel closer to November?
While Harris has kept the same focus on gun control during the early stages of her campaign that President Joe Biden had throughout his, Trump has de-emphasized the issue. He stripped a series of gun-rights promises from the Republican platform, didn’t invite a gun-rights speaker to the RNC, and didn’t mention gun policy at all during his record-long acceptance speech. So, seeing Trump go after Harris on guns and tout his own record is interesting–even if he did it by exaggerating both of their positions.
“She wants to take away everyone’s gun,” Trump said. “If you take away guns… can’t do it because people need guns for protection.”
“When I was president, I totally protected the guns, and I think it’s very important,” he followed up with later in the press conference. “When the bad guy walks in with a gun, you gotta have some way of protecting yourself.”
Trump often speaks in a stream-of-consciousness style, and there isn’t necessarily a strategy behind every desperate comment he makes. That much should be clear after nearly a decade of listening to Trump’s speeches.
Still, it was notable when he didn’t mention guns in his RNC acceptance speech. It’s notable he did mention it during Thursday’s press conference. Now, it was a reporter’s question that initially prompted Trump to talk about guns. So, he didn’t broach the subject himself. But he did go back to guns on his own later in the press conference.
He also shot down the idea that he might change his tune on guns after a would-be assassin shot him in the ear. When asked if he’d reconsider supporting a ban on AR-15s after being attacked with one, he said he wouldn’t.
All of that may reassure gun voters that Trump isn’t about to moderate his stance on guns. And there are some good reasons to think Trump may have recalculated how guns will impact the 2024 election.
For one, the race is much tighter now. If Trump’s comments were actually strategic rather than fleeting, they could represent a shift in how his campaign plans to approach the election. As Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms said on The Weekly Reload Podcast a few weeks back, Republicans shying away from gun politics was likely part of a calculation to reach a broader swath of more moderate voters in an attempt to expand their map of winnable states. Now that Harris has shot up in the polls and the realistic map of swing states has begun to narrow, the Trump Campaign may switch to a base turnout campaign.
Additionally, Harris felt the need to moderate on the issue. As part of a series of walkbacks her campaign rolled out since she became the nominee, they backed off her support for a mandatory buyback scheme for so-called assault weapons.
“The VP will not push for a mandatory buy back as president,” Lauren Hitt, a Harris spokesperson, told The Reload late last month.
Although, Harris has stuck by support for a ban on assault weapon sales as well as universal background checks and red flag laws. She’s even made sure to highlight those policies in nearly every single one of her campaign events. Picking Minnesota Governor Tim Walz also served as another way to double down on her support for strict gun control measures, given his turn from an NRA “A” rating to a supporter of the policies Harris is pushing after 2018.
So, there’s plenty of room for Trump and his pro-gun running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance, to contrast themselves with Harris and Walz.
But it remains unclear if they’re going to do that. Up until his Thursday press conference, Trump’s most recent comments on gun owners were that he doesn’t think they actually vote. He’s repeatedly emphasized that line, even at the NRA’s Annual Meeting.
“The gun owners don’t vote,” Trump said while announcing an initiative that appears to amount to little more than lawn signs and t-shirts. “It’s so crazy. I would think that they would vote more than any other group of people and it’s just the opposite. They don’t vote.”
Perhaps he’s decided to try and give gun owners a reason to turn out to vote. Or maybe Thursday’s comments were just a few fleeting thoughts in another stream-of-consciousness performance. The main way to tell the difference will be whether Trump starts to highlight his gun policy promises as consistently as Harris has been doing.
