Their presidential candidate narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. A bullet hit his ear on Saturday, fired from an AR-15-type semiautomatic weapon, a rifle often used by mass shooters in the United States.
However, in interviews with 12 Donald Trump delegates at the Republican Party convention in Milwaukee, none advocated limits or bans on assault rifles, raising the legal age to buy a gun or even stricter background checks.
The delegates were completely against any kind of reform of US gun laws.
Most saw even mild measures, such as expanded background checks or raising the legal age to purchase an assault weapon to 21, as violations of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees citizens the right to own guns.
Instead, delegates said any gun reforms should focus on funding better mental health support for troubled citizens, a standard Republican position.
They have blamed gun crimes and gun massacres — including the attempted assassination of Trump — largely on mental illness and guns falling into the wrong hands.
US law enforcement authorities are still trying to determine why Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old nursing home aide, shot Trump at his election rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Crooks was shot to death in the attack, which the FBI said was being investigated as potential domestic terrorism.
More effective mental health services are essential to identifying potential shooters and getting them help before they commit a gun crime, deputies interviewed said.
“It’s all about mental health,” said Will Boone, a delegate from Montana. “The right to have a weapon is enshrined in the Constitution. When you start to infringe on that, other rights start to be taken away.”
Steve Kramer of Georgia said it was a “lie” that expanding background checks would help.
“If you look at most murders, someone stole the gun, so background checks wouldn’t make a difference,” Kramer said.
Between 1966 and 2019, other than school shooters who stole their guns primarily from family members, most people who committed mass shootings purchased their guns legally, according to data compiled by the National Institute of Justice, a research agency under the Department of Justice. Justice.
The gun used by Trump’s alleged assassin belonged to his father, according to investigators.
The Republican Party has generally blocked attempts to reform gun laws, even after the 2012 massacre of 20 elementary school children in Connecticut by a man armed with an AR-15 assault weapon and two handguns.
Efforts to pass universal background checks and an assault weapons ban were defeated by Republicans in the U.S. Senate following the school massacre.
During his 2017-2021 term, Trump tried several times to relax gun laws, said Kris Brown, president of “Brady: United Against Gun Violence.”
Shortly after taking office, he signed into law a bill that rolled back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to buy guns.
The Trump administration has banned “bump stocks,” an accessory that essentially converts a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun. A bump stock was used in the deadliest mass shooting in US history in Las Vegas in 2017, when a gunman killed 60 and injured more than 400 people.
In June, the conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court lifted the ban on bump stocks.
In February, speaking to the National Rifle Association, Trump promised to revoke all gun restrictions enacted by Democratic President Joe Biden, who he will face in the Nov. 5 election.
Matthew Rust, a delegate from Wisconsin, said he believed an armed citizenry is a deterrent to shooters. “When a perpetrator knows there may be law-abiding citizens who can defend themselves, they are less likely to take action,” Rust said.
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