Trump Assassination Attempt Brings New Urgency for RNC to Affirm Support for 2nd Amendment

July 16, 2024 By David Codrea

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

Those words, accompanied by the iconic photographs of former President Donald Trump, ear bleeding and fist pumping defiantly into the air as swarming Secret Service agents rushed him off the Butler, PA rally stage, have set a new tone in the race to the White House.

“Set a new tone” isn’t really accurate. It’s more like “revealed something those of us paying attention to the deadly rhetoric of the left have been saying for years.” Much of that has been led by “celebrities” inciting mobs of fans to join in virtual “two minutes hate” sessions.

Recall how “comedienne” Kathy Griffin staged a photo shoot carrying a prop of his bloody head. Johnny Depp “joked about assassinating him. Micky Rourke said he would “love 30 seconds [to] give him a Louisville Slugger. A Comedy Central host wanted to “smother Trump with “the pillow they used to kill Scalia.” Madonna said she “thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.” Robert De Niro said he wanted to punch Trump in the face. And a Snoop Dogg video simulated shooting a Trump double in the head.

“How is it possible to hate a man like this and not hate those he represents?” I asked in a 2017 GUNS Magazine article. Actor Corey Stoll, who was playing Roman assassin Brutus at the time, likened Julius Caesar to an “avatar” for Trump.

Trump is the avatar—for every American citizen who supports the political platform he campaigns on. And the people who hate him, who hate you, want your guns. No shortage of comments posted to X from TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) trolls bemoaned that the assassination failed. They want him dead. So, if you’re planning on voting for him because you want to see the agenda he promises enacted, what must they “think” of you? It’s existential. To answer the question posed by Rodney King in response to the Los Angeles riots, no, we can’t all get along. Control freaks and their furious cult followers won’t allow it.

Controlled Chaos?

Assuming the facts being reported prove to be as presented, and it’s hardly paranoid to speculate on how reliable those are, two questions come immediately to mind: How was the shooter able to escape Secret Service detection while on a rooftop 400 feet away from the podium with a rifle and direct line of sight to Donald Trump? Why, according to videos posted on X that juxtapose sightings of the shooter and warnings to authorities, did it take two minutes before he fired the first shot that elicited their immediate return fire? (New reports that came out while this article was being drafted say “Alleged Trump shooter spotted by law enforcement nearly 30 minutes before shots fired.”) Some reports say responders were aware and awaiting order to fire on the sniper—if so, why wasn’t Trump immediately rushed off stage?

Is it really due to “abject failure”? Do incompetence allegations that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is an unqualified DEI appointment explain much of that failure? What about darker allegations? Is it irresponsible to repeat “conspiracy theories” that there was official involvement? Don’t political conspiracies exist? Those who call J6 a coup attempt and Trump their leader in sedition say they do.

Is distrust of the “Deep State,” to include anti-Trump establishment “uniparty” neocons as well as cultural Marxist Democrat, a rational reaction, especially when politically managed agencies control the information being released and government is now essentially investigating itself? And with a practically non-existent online profile revealed thus far into the background of the shooter (ostensibly a registered Republican who donated to a hardline Democrat PAC), what are we to believe about him, and if he truly acted alone?

How seriously should we take Democrats and their media cheerleaders who every day have been screaming to anyone who would listen that Trump is a threat to Democracy, an insurrectionist, a felon, a racist, a rapist and a tyrant, and who now urge us to “tone down the rhetoric”? Will it serve their political purposes if we do? And are there plans for the Justice Department and FBI to tone down calling “white nationalists,” that is, stereotypical MAGA voters, “the greatest threat” against America?

How seriously should we take thoughts and prayers for Donald Trump now offered by leading Democrats feigning sober unity, when the exact same actors have universally ridiculed the idea and demanded more citizen disarmament every time there’s been a gun-free zone shooting to exploit?

Conversely, how seriously should we take Republicans on their often-tepid promises to protect the right of the people to keep and bear arms, now that they’ve stripped all but a passing nod to the Second Amendment from the Republican National Committee platform? Especially with no shortage of Trump haters taking perverse glee in pointing out this is what he gets for not demanding gun bans – along with wishing the bullet had just hit an inch or two closer…?

And that brings up the question we need to not only ask, but demand answers to, even if some may not want to press it so soon after Trump survived taking a bullet: Will this strengthen his resolve to keep his promises to protect “our beautiful Second Amendment” or instead make him receptive to more concessions, like he’s been doing with the abortion issue, and also with immigration, now promising green cards to foreign nationals graduating from U.S. colleges? Add the RNC downplaying the right to keep and bear arms and it looks like the trifecta for dousing fire from his supporters’ bellies.

Make no mistake, the RNC does not issue policy statements without the Trump inner circle’s sanction, and they don’t make a move he objects to. Besides, its co-chair is Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law. (See the article Republican Platform Betrays Gun Owners.)

Some “pragmatic” influencers within the gun community were quick to make excuses. Trump has made his support for gun owners clear, they argue, and this is simply acknowledging a political reality: Trump and Biden supporters aren’t going to change. He needs to appeal to “independents” who haven’t made up their minds. Theirs will be the votes that mean the difference between Trump winning or losing, with attendant consequences for new laws likely to pass and new judges, especially for the Supreme Court, sure to be nominated. That, and things are different between now and 2016, and threats that needed to be spelled out then are no longer applicable, justifying the new abbreviated RKBA acknowledgment.

“I utterly disagree with that,” I told Armed American Radio’s Mark Walters on his nationally broadcast “Daily Defense” program. First, Trump hasn’t been clear. He’s offered general platitudes to rouse the masses, but very few unequivocal specifics to show he truly understands the Second Amendment and “shall not be infringed”. That many of his actions belie that (“Take the guns first, go through due process second”, “I don’t like them [silencers] at all”, “I don’t know why anyone needs an AR-15” as quoted in Emily Miller’s article detailing a report that Trump tried to get support for an assault weapon ban behind the scenes from 2018-19, etc.) is also given a pass, showing the lengths some in the gun owner community are willing to go to shore up an illusion. A recent example is his bump stock ban, now being portrayed by some as a genius 3D chess move to get ATF rules overturned by the Supreme Court—disregarding the risk that put citizens under who weren’t clued into a secret strategy with no guarantee of outcome. If that’s what he really did (and I call BS on that), he was treating them and their rights as pawns.

With all the new infringements to the Second Amendment being proposed by Democrats and the Biden DOJ/ATF in their non-stop attempts to thwart the Bruen decision until such time as Democrats can “win” the numbers to reshape the high court, there’s never been a more urgent time to get in front of the Second Amendment, and not just defend it but advance it. It’s not like the prohibitionists shy away from demanding all sorts of disarmament edicts—just look at the DNC platform. They excel at lying propaganda to scare the bejeebers out of the ignorant and the emotional, happily aided and abetted by big media collaborators.

Giving Trump and the Republicans all the ammo they need to defeat gun grabber arguments is well within the skill set of the newly formed Gun Owners for Trump coalition, of which Walters is one of the prominent national figures. If “independents” haven’t figured out by now that the differences between what Biden and Trump campaign on are existential, they haven’t been paying attention. If talking about the right to keep and bear arms scares them more than talking about taking them away, Republicans avoiding the issue is exactly the wrong thing to do and ensures manipulated ignorance will prevail.

Since when is that preferable to educating the independents? What’s needed is truthful information, because there’s not an argument the Democrats make that can’t be recognized as a lie, exposed as such, and defeated with the truth. Ostensible political leaders who promise they will protect the Second Amendment need to be able to do that, and if they can’t, they need to consult with those who can.

Yet Walters admitted on air that the RNC and Trump campaign never called him or, to his knowledge, any Gun Owners for Trump leaders before making the decision to excise the party’s commitment to gun rights. He and they have a wealth of resources at their fingertips who argue 2A for a living. That such a decision was made unilaterally, without input from the people held up as the subject matter experts does not speak of the group being any more than disposable props trotted out when needed for limited PR, but then hidden away when inconvenient or embarrassing.

“2020 is Trump's to Blow with Gun Owners,” I wrote in Firearms News back in 2019. While many gun owners feel like they have no choice but to vote for him again in November, a growing number are resigning themselves to TINVOWOOT (There is No Voting Our Way Out of This) pessimism (pragmatism?). That and demoralizing your base to not spook the undecideds is no way to win a race, especially when Trump has a bully pulpit to reach them with intellectually and emotionally persuasive counters to all the lies they’ve been fed. 2024 is his to blow, too.

With all eyes now on Donald Trump, all ears will be, too. If the independents are what will make the difference, why not explain guns and why there’s a historic and practical right to have them in convincing terms instead of treating them as scary things we dare not speak of? All this, of course, presupposes he will still make it to the election. With the raw and visceral hatred directed against him -- and us – the words ending an email from a friend seem a fitting sentiment to sign off with: “I think that will be all from me today. I feel a need to pray… and after that, to clean and oil the guns.” We live in interesting times.

About the Author

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts onTwitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com.