President Donald Trump. The Guardian/EPA.
Today was fairly shocking for pro-gun supporters of Donald Trump to say the least. During his meeting with congress Trump said and did some things that will not make gun rights supporters happy. At all. The Guardian has a surprisingly fair summary here, but I will go through the main points:
-Asking Steve Scalise (R) to not include the CCW reciprocity to the proposed gun control bill saying it won't pass.
-Said Pat Toomy (R) was "afraid of the NRA" for not including a measure to raise the age of buying a rifle to 21.
-Saying due process should happen after guns are taken in cases involving mentally ill people.
-Saying he will ban bump stocks himself.
-Saying Dianne Feinstein should put her "assault weapons" ban into the bill
On the face of it it looks horrible for gun rights supporters. But is it? I am not sure. I have a few theories that could explain this and not all of them are bad. Let's go through them.
1. Trump really has flipped on gun rights and we are all doomed. This is what Breitbart is going with and a decent faction of gun rights supporters agree with the rest fearing it could be true. If it is than it is a huge betrayal by President Trump and one that I doubt any of us will ever recover from. It would be the equivalent if Hillary Clinton had gotten elected and then suddenly decided that she was going to ban abortion. It would wreck the party and cost Trump a 2nd term and would likely end gun rights as a group that tries to solve their problems through elections.
And that's the best case scenario. I think if the assault weapons ban actually passes it will be civil war, or close to it. We did the same thing in the 90's and it led to Ruby Ridge, Waco and eventually the Oklahoma City Bombing. People forget how close we were to civil war in the 90's over gun control and it could very easily happen again. Actually trying to enforce a ban on the most popular guns in America would be a bloodbath and one that could destroy the entire country.
Is there evidence that Trump is actually caving on gun rights? Not really. It does look like he is willing to compromise on some things and may take action on his own but I doubt he would actually sign an assault weapons ban. I am guessing that this option is unlikely. After all, Trump has concealed carry for years and his other solutions, including getting rid of gun free zones and arming teachers, will be popular among gun rights supporters. Unless we see a lot more evidence of Trump caving on guns we should at least give him some benefit of the doubt.
2. This is 3d chess and we are all getting played. We must remember that Trump has supposedly "betrayed" his base before and ended up not doing anything he was accused of. The first case was the Syrian airstrike that pissed off his anti-war/anti-interventionism supporters. That airstrike ended up being extremely limited and was more of an aberration than any real change in policy. Trump's Syria policy was not really effected at all and has remained at least acceptable to most of his supporters, if not everything they have wanted.
DACA was an even better example. Trump's immigration base was furious when he appeared to be backing the Democrats on DACA but months later nothing has been done and DACA looks like it will expire on it's own. Trump was basically daring Democrats to own DACA as doing so would hurt their chances in November and in 2020. Afterwards, the Democrats abandoned DACA to its fate and Trump looks like the reasonable one while at the same time his supporters get what they want.
The same thing could be happening here. Trump may be forcing the Democrats to run on gun control, knowing how unpopular it is. Doing so will galvanize the GOP base who will vote in the 2018 midterms while at the same time depressing turn out for blue dog Democrats who support gun rights.
There is some evidence of Trump trying to sabotage the various Democratic supported bills which would support this theory. Certainly, taking out the CCW bill, which would be a huge concession from the Democrats, removes any carrot for congressional Republicans to support all but the most mild gun control bills, like the fix NICS bill which honestly isn't that bad. Telling Dianne Feinstein to add the AWB to the bill would kill it forever if it happened, no GOP member of congress or the Senate would ever support it, which is an obvious way to kill any new gun control.
I think that this is a likely possibility as it seems extremely similar to what happened with DACA. I am guessing that Trump knows that gun control is a losing issue for Dems and wants them to try and fail to pass something huge so that they run on it in 2018 and 2020.
3. It's a negotiation and Trump is just throwing out wild ideas out there. We have also seen this before. During the election, Trump would often test out new ideas to gauge the audience reactions to it. If they were popular he would keep them and if they weren't you wouldn't see him mention them again.
If that is the case then we might be in trouble. Trump might be getting softer on guns and may be trying to see if gun control really has the wide support the media says it has. That would be extremely dangerous and could eventually lead to scenario one.
The good news is that this problem is extremely easy to solve. Just tell Trump that he is off base here. Gun rights supporters are no strangers to contacting our lawmakers and there is no reason to not do so here. Just give him a call or contact him via e-mail. And don't forget to do the same with your congressional lawmakers as well as that can't hurt. If Trump really is willing to negotiate here we need to remind him why that's a bad idea and why his most dedicated supporters won't go along with it.
4. Trump's just being Trump and we shouldn't worry too much about it. Trump often says one thing and then does another, just like all politicians. Trump is also prone to thinking things out loud that are, on reflection, things he doesn't mean. That isn't one of his best qualities but it could explain what is going on here.
Trump probably does want a deal on gun control and probably does want a bump stock ban, but everything else could have just been him thinking out loud or just telling people what they want to hear. Time will tell if this is true or not.
And some of this has been overblown a bit in the media. Trump also spent some time during the meeting defending gun rights and praising the NRA. He may not have had an actual shift in beliefs, and may have just been having a bad day.
As time goes on we will see which of these options are true. I really don't think option one is real. I can't imagine that Trump would betray his base so much as to support an assault weapons ban and we should give him some benefit of the doubt. And if I'm wrong about it than it's already too late to do much about it short of desperately contacting Trump to hopefully get him to change his mind and stockpiling weapons for Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo. I think both options two and four are much more likely explanations with perhaps a bit of both.
That doesn't mean that the gun rights community should sit on its hands. There is a chance that number three is correct as well and if it is we need to make sure that we don't support gun control no matter what the media says. That is why it is so important to contact him and other politicians to make sure out positions are known. As supporters of gun rights we should be doing this whenever the issue comes up!
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