Editor’s note: This story contains derogatory language that some readers may find offensive.
On the morning of August 17, Donald Trump appeared on a large screen in the Knoxville Convention Center’s Grand Ballroom as the first-ever Gun Owners Advocacy and Leadership Summit got underway. “We’re now running against the most radical gun-grabber that has ever been nominated for president of the United States,” Trump warned. “Kamala Harris has supported gun confiscation schemes throughout her career, and she does it constantly. That’s really putting her right up alongside some of the most dangerous dictators anywhere in history.”
Trump then delivered a message repeated often at the two-day event. “The one thing with gun owners, and I don’t know why, maybe they just have a certain way about them, maybe they are rebellious, but they don’t vote. They gotta get out and vote,” he said. “If the gun owners of this country voted, just a small percentage of them, we would have a victory like you’ve never seen.”
Trump’s appeal and the summit itself underscore the increased clout of Gun Owners of America, the group behind the event. Founded in 1976, GOA has always billed itself as a more extreme, no-compromise alternative to the National Rifle Association. It opposes all firearms restriction, wants the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives abolished, and believes its mission is rooted in the Christian Bible. Since 2019, when revelations about misuse of funds began to erode the NRA’s membership, revenue, and status in the gun movement, the GOA and an array of smaller organizations have moved to fill the void, spending more on lobbying and wading deeper into electoral politics.
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Steven Inglima, a member of both groups who had driven to the summit from North Carolina, said that while the NRA remains bigger and more varied in its programs, the GOA is “by far the more important organization” because of its hard line. “Once you start compromising a right, it stops being a right,” said Inglima, 71. “The GOA is on point, far more on point, than the NRA.”
Some speakers made digs at the NRA, including the group’s former spokesperson, Dana Loesch, who drew cheers with a reference to the controversial spending habits of former NRA leadership. “There are organizations that worry about wardrobe and makeup more than lobbying for your rights in Washington, D.C.,” Loesch told an audience. “And if they have any problem with what I just said, they can email me at kiss my A double-snakes dot com.”
The summit was an amalgam of pro-gun absolutism, religiosity, and commerce. (GOA’s senior vice president, Erich Pratt, ended one prayer session by thanking the Lord and Brownell’s, a firearm’s company and the event’s primary sponsor.) Many panelists were so-called gun influencers, social media personalities who get firearms industry cash to produce content geared toward gun enthusiasts. One influencer, Johnny B, kicked the summit off with an event he called “Spicy Friday.” “They hate you and they hate America, but I am not going to tone it down,” Johnny B vowed before showing memes to a chuckling crowd. One meme — “Kamala Harris Hits the Campaign Trail” — depicted a young woman in a skin-tight blue dress soliciting a trucker. Another showed Michelle Obama holding a sign that read, “Black Dudes for Harris.”
On an exhibition floor, firearms and accessory makers displayed a range of goods, from hunting arms, self-defense pistols, and AR-15-style rifles to Second Amendment-themed bourbon, ballistics dummies, and high-powered rifle scopes. Browsers wore T-Shirts emblazoned with statements like “ATF is Gay,” “Taxes are Gay,” and “Guns Don’t Kill People, Feds Do.” One T-shirt for sale identified the wearer as a “Waterboarding Instructor.” Also on display was a 1969 Ford Mustang driven by John Wick, a fictional hitman featured in a series of revenge fantasy films that have served as product placement vehicles for the firearms industry. Nearby, a large poster showed Trump with a halo around his head, a bloodied ear, and a crown of rifle rounds, his torso bare, tattooed, and muscular. “It Was God Alone,” the poster read, a reference to the belief among many attendees that a divine hand had saved the candidate from assassination.
On panels, speakers urged parents to take their children out of public schools, where “the feminist education cult” holds sway and “the male spirit is crushed.” Kids who stay in public school will ultimately reject their parents’ values, an audience was told. Millennials are proof. “They are voting for Kamala,” a speaker said. “They don’t even know what bathroom to use.”
GOA regional political directors held a discussion on organizing, describing how their real fight was not with Democrats, but with Republicans willing to strike deals. “They’re fine wearing the boots of oppression,” one panelist said, “so long as they get to do the curb-stomping.”
Sam Paredes, a GOA board member who leads Gun Owners of California, gave a talk highlighting the threat posed by “radical humanists,” whom he denounced as corrupt because they base their ethics on sources not supernatural. “We are fighting evil,” said Paredes, who advocated a combative stance when dealing with opponents. “If you act by nature and respond politely,” read one slide in his presentation, “the liberal will crush you!”
Behind the sometimes bizarre rants there was a deep political conviction, summarized early in the summit by Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, known as ‘Kane’ in his pro-wrestling days: “Our Constitution contains a fail safe, our Constitution contains what I call a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency clause.’ Our constitution contains the Second Amendment.”
Jacobs was clear that he does not want that glass broken, but views it as an essential deterrent. “Any petty tyrant that thinks and dreams that they can oppress us has to contend with their worst nightmare,” he said, “millions of everyday people, standing in opposition to them, armed to the teeth.”
Many at the summit saw Harris as a threat to the continued vitality of that deterrent, not least because of her perceived determination to confiscate guns. Rallying gun owners to defeat her in November was the chief talking point of several speakers. (Of course, animus in GOA ranks to Harris predates her rise to Democratic presidential candidate. The group’s longtime attorney, William J. Olson, has supported a conspiracy theory that Harris does not meet the constitution’s citizenship requirement for the presidency.) Speakers claimed that there are 10 million hunters and gun owners in America who are not registered to vote. “If the gun owners of America show up on Election Day, we will wipe them out,” said Kash Patel, who served on Trump’s National Security Council and has promised that Trump will exact revenge on enemies should he regain office.
Harris has a lengthy record of supporting firearms restrictions. In 2019, she expressed support for AR-15-style rifle buybacks, but has recently dropped that position. Harris has said that as president, she will work to pass universal background checks, red flag laws, and a ban on AR-15-style rifles. While no such ban has been worked out in detail, it’s not likely to involve confiscating or buying back rifles already in circulation, but would prohibit their future sale.
Inglima, the attendee from North Carolina, said that by prohibiting him from purchasing a certain firearm, such a ban would be tantamount to confiscation and a step toward Harris’s real goal of seizing guns. “Do I think that would be the endgame?” he said. “Of course.”
While Inglima’s view was widely held, it was not universal. Thomas Grant had traveled from Michigan for the event. While not a GOA member, he described himself as a gun rights supporter who was made uneasy by the rhetoric and partisanship on display. He said that to gain advantage, both sides in the gun debate tended to argue that they were on the verge of a cataclysmic defeat at the hands of their enemies, when the real picture was more complex. “I’m 35, so I remember that every time there is a Democratic candidate, it’s ‘They are coming for our guns! They are coming for our guns!’ and it did not happen,” Grant said. “Will they try to put in place tougher restrictions? Yes. But actually come in and confiscate guns? No.”
The inaugural summit had moments of buzz and a busy exhibition floor, but also sparse crowds for some events. In response to a request for attendance figures and comment on whether the summit met expectations, GOA spokesperson Luis Valdes provided a written statement that referred to the event by its acronym: “We don’t have exact numbers yet, but I can tell you this. There were more people who understood what “SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED” means at GOALs than at the DNC convention right now. The people who attended GOALS actually understood what liberty and freedom is, unlike anti-gun Democrats who want to eviscerate one of the clear protections in the Bill of Rights.”
The convention center’s Grand Ballroom has a capacity of 2,640 and there were brief periods when the room appeared two-thirds full. But there were only about 50 people there to hear Pratt, the GOA’s senior vice president, end the event with a prayer. “Lord, we commit it to you — we commit these upcoming elections to you. We thank you that you are sovereign and that no matter what happens, we can rest in the fact that you are sovereign in history,” Pratt said. “Lord, we look forward to next year, to an even bigger and better convention.”
