"You better arm yourself": Republican uses Trump shooting to defend AR-15s at GOP convention

A Trump campaign adviser, speaking at a concealed carry event at the Republican National Convention, lauded the Supreme Court’s rulings boosting Second Amendment rights and promised the next Trump administration would continue its “remaking of the judiciary.”

The event, sponsored by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, took place on the second morning of the RNC – whose platform has little mention of Second Amendment rights, save for a sentence that promises Republicans will “defend our constitution, our bill of rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including… the right to keep and bear arms.”

But despite the platform’s scant mention of gun rights, Trump co-campaign manager and senior advisor Chris LaCivita said the former president, if elected, would continue to support and defend the Second Amendment.

“One of the largest impacts that President Trump had, clearly, in his first term, was a remaking of the judiciary,” he told attendees. “From three Supreme Court justices to all the way down the line. And I think you will see that continue.”

This year, the Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision struck down a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms regulation – passed in the wake of the deadly 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting –  banning “bump stocks,” a piece of equipment that allows a semi-automatic weapon to fire automatically like a machine gun.

And in 2023, the Supreme Court’s landmark Bruen ruling struck down New York’s concealed carry restrictions and ruled that firearms restrictions must fall within the United States' so-called "historical tradition."

LaCivita said that “gun owners don’t vote at the level everyone thinks they do” – which he said makes it all the more important for gun rights activists to show up at the polls in November.

“I mean, this is why this scares the hell out of the Democrats on the left,” he said. "I mean, that's why they're talking about packing the court, increasing the number of justices, these kinds of things. But I think that's where we can have the biggest impact.”

Congresswoman Kat Cammack, a Republican from Florida who also spoke at Tuesday’s event, said her focus is registering 10 million hunters and gun owners in the U.S. who she says aren’t registered to vote.

Congressman Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Texas, said supporters of gun rights should get ready for a renewed attack from the left on AR-15 style guns in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

“The insinuation that we're going to just eradicate this country of guns is a ridiculous one,” Hunt said. “So you better arm yourself accordingly and make sure that you can get the ability to respond when an incident like that happens, because there's bad people out there that want to see all Americans dead.“

Hunt said the assassination attempt shows the power of an old NRA adage: “good guys with guns” saving the day.

“There are 400 million guns currently in circulation,” Hunt said. “Guns aren’t going anywhere. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And that son-of-a-b**** is now dead because a good guy with a gun shot him.”

The U.S. Concealed Carry Association held the Tuesday mid-day event at Pfister Hotel in Milwaukee, and handed a flier to attendees with tips on how to increase situational awareness, warning: “Your life depends on it.”

LaCivita said the campaign is undergoing a security assessment and will hold a training class to “basically teach people and give them a better understanding of their surroundings.”

This week, the diminished National Rifle Association is facing an ongoing corruption trial in New York, with no events or speakers on the RNC schedule.

That’s in sharp contrast to 2016, when the GOP dedicated about half-a-page to its plans to confirm “additional anti-gun justices” and fight “frivolous” lawsuits against gun manufacturers.

The 2016 platform also said the party would push legislation to allow firearm reciprocity and constitutional carry and oppose limits on the “most popular and common modern rifle” as well as restrictions on magazine capacity.

The NRA Institute for Legislation Action’s then-executive director Chris Cox spoke at the RNC in 2016, while the 2020 RNC featured remarks by the white St. Louis couple charged – and eventually pardoned – for waving guns outside their home during a Black Lives Matter protest.

Still – LaCivita said both he and Trump are “very, very big, supporter[s] of the Second Amendment.”

“That's something that's very important to us, from a campaign standpoint and an issue standpoint,” LaCivita said. “Allowing law abiding citizens to carry their firearms and to protect themselves and to protect their families. And that's an issue that will always be an important one for the Republican Party. It's also important in this election because Biden has made it clear – they're saying the quiet part out loud now, they're just more and more emboldened by what we believe is and what is an extreme anti-firearms policy.”

Dennis Barthemheier, who owns a gun range in Wisconsin and attended the Tuesday event, said he “absolutely” expects a renewed push by liberals to infringe on gun rights.

“They’ve been doing it for years - a constant chipping away,” Barthemheier said. “They try to chip around the edges, and then they’ll go for the kill.”

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Investigators are trying to figure out how the 20-year-old suspect who fired an AR-style rifle toward Trump on Saturday got ahold of the weapon, which his father purchased – and how the security team failed to prevent the shooting.

Last month, Biden called for a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

Advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety says those steps are crucial to preventing mass fatality shootings, saying on their website: “They are generally capable of firing far more bullets, far faster than manual-action hunting rifles.”

Hunt said the left is using the AR-15 as a “Trojan horse” to try to reign in gun rights.

“The left is using the AR-15 as a scapegoat for infringement on your rights,” he said. “So what they're going to try to do is demonize the AR-15 to make it seem like everybody is a crazed mass shooter even though that's completely false. So my message to you all is to be vigilant here. They cannot go after a pistol braces, they cannot go after bump stocks, they cannot go after AR-15s. Because the second we allow them to infringe on that we are letting the fox in the henhouse.”

Barthemheier and another attendee at Tuesday’s event, Bob Johnson of Hawaii, said they aren’t looking for Trump and Congress to pass new gun rights laws.

“We have plenty of laws on the books that protect the average person,” Barthemheier said.

Katie Pointer Baney, the managing director of government affairs for USCCA and its service provider Delta Defense, said the group represents over 830,000 supporters nationwide. Baney  is also senior advisor for the USCCA-FSL Super PAC and as executive director of its USCCA-FSL Action Fund.

According to OpenSecrets, the USCCA’s Super PAC spent about $423,000 to support five federal candidates elected to office in 2022 – including Hunt.

That’s a far cry from the nearly $16 million in outside spending that the NRA reported in 2022 – or $29 million in 2020.

Still, Baney said public safety is top of mind for voters.

“The temperature is clearly rising in the United States,” Baney said. “I mean, we just saw one of the most protected men in the world almost killed by a deranged, evil individual. Average Americans, I think, are on edge about their personal safety.”