What A Trump Win Means For Guns

The movement to expand gun rights gained further momentum Tuesday as voters returned Donald Trump to the White House — this time accompanied by a vice president who has called for disbanding the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

For the last several years, efforts to reform gun laws have stalled, largely limited to blue states restricting the purchase of semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines or strengthening “red flag” measures that temporarily bar people who pose a risk from buying or possessing guns.

Meanwhile, the movement to broaden gun rights has blossomed, backed by a conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which vastly expanded the Second Amendment two years ago, and a flurry of state laws guaranteeing the right to carry concealed handguns without the need to apply for a license — now on the books in 28 states.

Firearm sales have remained at historic highs since a gun-buying spree during the COVID-19 pandemic that broadened the demographics of gun ownership to include more people of color, women and liberals.

Trump’s election promises to make the burgeoning Second Amendment movement stronger.

On the campaign trail, Trump — even as gun rights grew stronger.

Trump’s most memorable move on guns during his first term was to ban bump stocks with an ATF rule after the Oct. 1, 2017, mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. (The Supreme Court struck down that rule this year.)

And though Trump has repeatedly drawn the endorsement of the NRA and reportedly owned at least three handguns before losing his gun rights as a convicted felon, he did not portray himself as a gun enthusiast in public. Indeed, he appeared at times to be surprisingly ignorant about firearms. In a now-deleted video at a campaign stop at a gun store last year, Trump admired a Glock pistol and asked, “and they sell well?”

The iconic Austrian brand popularized the polymer-framed, semiautomatic pistols that dominate handgun sales in the United States today.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), however, has built a track record as a gun enthusiast and Second Amendment absolutist whose views may prove influential.

While running for his Senate seat, Vance accused the ATF of spying on Americans by creating a database of gun transactions — a claim that PolitiFact has rated as false.

“We need to just abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in the first place,” Vance said in a video widely circulated by gun groups. “Why does it exist if it’s not preventing the gun-running on the southern border by the drug cartels but it’s spying on American citizens exercising their constitutional rights.”

In his July 17 speech at the Republican National Convention, Vance recounted how his family found 19 loaded handguns in the house when his grandmother died. “This frail, old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm’s length of whatever she needed to protect her family,” Vance said.

Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan last week that after the July 13 attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally, he rushed home, loaded multiple firearms and stood guard over his house.

During the campaign, Vance also publicly opposed the Safer Communities Act — a modest reform bill that funneled money into community violence intervention and took steps to close the “boyfriend loophole” that had allowed domestic abusers to escape restrictions on gun possession that apply to people who attack their spouses.

Reformers did see some reason for hope, however.

This year’s Republican platform had little to say about guns. Neither did Project 2025, the voluminous right-wing road map for the presidential transition charted by the conservative Heritage Foundation and several former Trump officials.

At the vice presidential debate, Vance paid lip service to the need for unspecified bipartisan reform to address gun violence.

In Tuesday’s elections, Colorado’s Proposition KK, the nation’s only major ballot measure on guns, easily passed. It imposes a 6.5% tax on firearm and ammunition sales, setting aside the revenue to pay for services for crime victims, school security and mental health.

And some of the core positions that reformers have pressed for at the federal level remain overwhelmingly popular, with polling suggesting more than 9 out of 10 Americans favor universal background checks.

“We know, like the vast majority of Americans, that this should be a country where Americans are free from gun violence,” Emma Brown, executive director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told HuffPost. “We have every expectation that the Republicans and Democrats that we have worked with to notch all of these wins over the last decade will continue to work with us to secure that progress that is supported by the vast, vast majority of Americans, because it is lifesaving and needed.”