Republicans remain silent on gun control, one week after Trump shooting

More than a week after Donald Trump was assassinated with an assault rifle, his political supporters and colleagues in the Republican Party have remained silent on the issue of tightening America’s notoriously lax gun laws.

The intransigence comes amid a US election already deeply marked by fears of political violence and potential civil unrest, before a 20-year-old gunman armed with an AR-15 rifle opened fire on the former president, wounding him and two others and killing a protester in Pennsylvania.

Opposition to nearly all forms of gun control reform, such as banning assault weapons, has become a litmus test for Republicans seeking public office, experts say. In the week since the shooting, Republican figures have made no significant statements on gun control.

“The Republican Party is vehemently opposed to any further gun reform, and any Republican who opposes that position is likely to face a primary challenge,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and gun rights expert.

It’s a change from previous assassinations, or attempted assassinations, of people such as former U.S. President Ronald Reagan, when lawmakers from both parties passed bills to tighten gun laws.

After John Hinckley Jr. shot and killed Reagan and three others, including presidential spokesman James Brady, in 1981, Brady and his wife, Sarah, successfully lobbied to establish a federal system of background checks for potential gun buyers, to be used by federally licensed dealers. Reagan, a Republican, supported the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and former President Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.

Clinton also passed a federal ban on assault weapons in 1994, with significant bipartisan support, including that of Reagan and some Republicans in Congress.

To gain their support, lawmakers limited the ban to 10 years. Republicans let the ban expire in 2004.

Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to kill Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13 with an AR-15 assault rifle. The rifle has been used in several mass shootings in recent decades, including the 2012 attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut and the 2017 attack at a Las Vegas music festival.

Gun control groups such as Brady: United Against Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have since advocated for bans on assault rifles, but Republican lawmakers have opposed those initiatives.

Winkler and other experts don’t expect Republican intransigence to change, despite Trump’s popularity.

“If the shooting of 20 young children at Sandy Hook doesn’t lead to a rethink of gun safety reform, it’s not clear what will. I think the answer from a conservative perspective is generally to have more guns,” Winkler said.

The National Rifle Association, which has led the effort to oppose gun control reform, declined an interview request, but a spokesperson said in a statement: “Given the information shared to date, no gun control law could have prevented this horrific and cowardly attack — including so-called ‘universal’ background checks. But, as we all know, that won’t stop the gun control lobby and its allies from making their usual calls for gun control.”

A Trump campaign adviser also told Reuters that if the Republican were elected, “we would see a continuation of support and defense of the Second Amendment.”

Kris Brown, chairman of the Brady campaign, disagrees with the NRA’s claim that stricter gun laws, such as banning assault rifles, would not have prevented the shooting at the Trump rally.

“Crooks chose that weapon because he was on a building that was about 400 feet away and the only way he could have fired that shot that injured the president, that killed someone else, that injured another person, was with an assault weapon. So by definition, if we had had a non-assault order in place, yes, that could have made a difference,” Brown said.

Joshua Horwitz, a professor of gun violence prevention and awareness at Johns Hopkins University, expects Republicans in Congress to focus on the Secret Service and questions about how the shooter got so close to Trump, rather than discussing the weapon used.

“Republicans in the United States House of Representatives will not hold hearings on banning assault rifles,” Horwitz said.

Interestingly, the Republican National Committee platform, released about a week before the assassination, mentions in an introduction defending the “right to keep and bear arms,” ​​but makes no further mention of gun policy.

It’s the first time since the 1970s that the party has not included gun issues in its platform, according to Robert Spitzer, an associate professor at William & Mary Law School who has studied gun policy for decades.

But Spitzer doesn’t see this as a sign of greater openness to tougher gun laws.

“I think it’s purely pragmatic for Trump to avoid controversial issues that might undermine the support he would otherwise get,” Spitzer said.

Gun control advocates have made progress at the state level, however. In recent years, states including Illinois and Delaware have passed laws banning assault weapons. Nine states now prohibit the purchase and possession of such weapons, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.

In 2022, the federal government, with the support of Democrats and some Republicans, also passed legislation that included measures to expand background checks for people ages 18 to 21 who want to buy a gun. It also prompted states to pass “alert laws,” which allow people to request temporary confiscation of a person’s firearm if the person is deemed a danger to themselves or others.

“There’s a clear plan to build a strong gun violence prevention infrastructure and to implement legislative and policy changes” and spend more money on “community violence intervention, so I’m optimistic about where the movement is going,” Horwitz said. “I guess I’m pessimistic that this particular shooting is going to be a game changer.”