Former President Donald Trump has vowed to roll back a host of the Biden administration’s violence prevention efforts if he reenters the White House — and when it comes to gun policies he would pursue, Trump’s agenda includes many of the National Rifle Association’s long-standing goals.
Filling the federal courts with gun-friendly judges “is crucial,” Trump’s team told the NRA’s magazine. “By the end of this year, Democrats will have appointed over 60 percent of the federal circuit and district court judges,” they noted. Of particular importance is the Supreme Court, where pro-gun justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito will be 80 and 78, respectively, by the end of the next administration.
The three SCOTUS justices Trump appointed — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — all voted in favor of the 2022 Bruen decision that established the right to carry concealed guns in public for self-defense and rewrote the methodology for courts to decide the constitutionality of gun laws. Bruen has been cited in thousands of challenges to gun laws over the last two years.
Trump has also pledged to enact national concealed carry reciprocity, a longtime gun rights priority, which would allow people with gun permits to take their weapons across state lines and require every other state to accept their gun permit regardless of differences in permitting standards. A Trump presidency — which could include a GOP-controlled Senate, according to the latest polling and analysis — could change that.
“Concealed carry reciprocity is probably still the top legislative priority for the gun lobby in Congress,” said Nick Wilson, the senior director of gun violence prevention at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a progressive think tank. “It’s going to be a lot of unknowns. We’re going to have this severe whiplash, especially going from the Biden and Harris administration doing more on gun violence than any other administration.”
Trump is planning to further dilute the Justice Department’s power by making federal funding for state and local law enforcement contingent upon arrest and prosecution rates for violent crime. So if a city or state doesn’t hit its targets, it loses out on funding. His operating theory is that crime isn’t actually dropping, as has been widely reported and verified. Instead, he claims that arrest rates are what’s dropping, due to the “collapse” of law enforcement. He will also appoint someone to head the FBI who is “willing to clean out many of those on the 7th floor” — meaning the most senior agents.
Another Trump priority is to expand the National Crime Victimization Survey, his team told the NRA’s magazine, the federal government’s twice-yearly poll yielding valuable data about violent crime, which is often used by Republicans to paint a picture of rising violence.
From The Trace
- The Four Federal Gun Violence Prevention Efforts Trump Could Dismantle: If reelected, the former president has vowed to unwind Biden administration initiatives to combat gun trafficking and shootings.
- Project 2025 Would Obliterate Federal Policing of Racist Violence: The FBI thwarts dozens of domestic terror plots each year. The 900-page plan would upend that — with dire consequences for vulnerable groups.
- Shooting Deaths Are Down by 10 Percent Across the U.S., Despite What Politicians Say: The decreases are most pronounced in Democratic-led cities like those that the Trump campaign has painted as centers of violence.
- Several States Moved to Restrict Guns at Polling Places This Year. Two Succeeded: The push to keep guns away from voting sites reflects growing concern about voter intimidation and political violence surrounding this year’s presidential election.
- Colorado Voters Consider Taxing Guns and Ammo to Fund Services for Domestic Violence Survivors: The gun lobby opposes the measure, but advocates see it as “a matter of life and death.”
Election 2024
Since his 2016 campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump has made at least 40 remarks in which he incited or praised violence against Americans. On Thursday night, at an Arizona campaign event, the former president escalated his violent rhetoric, this time in the direction of former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney: “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her,” Trump said. [The Atlantic/CNN]
The survivors of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School are now old enough to vote. Their lives have been shaped by gun violence, and frustration over stalled policy efforts to prevent it. Six survivors say that’s why they’re casting ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris. [The Washington Post]
Law enforcement and national security officials are on high alert for election-related political violence. While federal agencies have spent years trying to learn from the mistakes of the January 6 riot, their role is limited, because state and local officials are the primary authorities on elections. Rita Katz, the head of SITE Intelligence Group — a company that tracks extremist activity online and warned about the potential of an attack before the Capitol insurrection — says she’s alarmed about how “proactive and organized the far right has become” ahead of the election. [Vox/NBC/Politico]
Tennessee state Representative Gloria Johnson — who gained prominence as a member of the “Tennessee Three,” a group of Democratic representatives who participated in an anti-gun violence demonstration in the state House after a school shooting — is running a long-shot campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican. She acknowledges that her chances of winning are slim, but that’s not necessarily why she entered the race. [The New York Times]
What to Know Today
A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court rejected a challenge to the district’s ban on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, finding that the law has a “historical analogue” that makes it constitutional under the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision. The challenge is likely to make its way to the high court. Meanwhile, the Hawaii Supreme Court used a recent case to counter the court’s decision, and openly criticize its federal counterpart: “Bruen, McDonald, Heller, and other cases show how the [Supreme] Court handpicks history to make its own rules.” [Courthouse News/The New Republic]
Under President Joe Biden, the Justice Department has opened a dozen investigations into potential civil rights abuses by police departments, but has not secured agreements for reform in any case. That’s a much slower pace than the previous Democratic administration under President Barack Obama. [Reuters]
Police in St. Louis, Missouri, struggle to solve murders. In a new short film, family members who lost loved ones to violence discuss how that failure plays into their grief. [The Marshall Project]
Most American gun owners today say that they own guns primarily for protection and self-defense. Research shows that this desire for protection is more than physical — people may own firearms to protect themselves against psychological threats, too. [The Conversation]
As of this academic year, making threats of mass violence — credible or not — against schools in Tennessee is a felony, up from a misdemeanor offense. The law has been criticized for casting too wide a net, and unnecessarily traumatizing kids by arresting them over jokes or rumors. For one 11-year-old with autism, that criticism became painfully real. [ProPublica and WPLN/Nashville Public Radio]
On Thursday, Young Thug was released from jail after pleading guilty to gang, drug, and gun charges, ending a Georgia trial that lasted more than two years. The rapper was sentenced to time served and 15 years of probation, during which he is required to return to the Atlanta area four times a year to make a live anti-gang, anti-gun violence presentation at a school or a community organization serving children. [WABE]
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Data Point
More than 383,000 — the number of students who have experienced gun violence at their schools since the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School. [The Washington Post]
Non Sequitur
Sleep On It: The $700 San Francisco ‘Pod’ With Privacy Curtains and Charging Ports: “A company that rents ‘sleeping pods’ in downtown San Francisco for $700 a month has had 300 people apply for its remaining 17 beds, the company’s CEO said.” [The Guardian]
This newsletter was compiled by Sunny Sone.
