Matt Rourke/Associated Press
On Tuesday morning, just a few days after a lone 20-year-old climbed a roof in Butler, Pennsylvania, shot former President Donald Trump in the ear, and killed one person using an AR-15 rifle, attendees of the Republican National Convention were gathered in a swank hotel room to hear members of Congress and the Trump campaign talk about protecting the rights of gun owners. In a normal world, the event, organized by the US Concealed Carry Association, may have faced some criticism for being in poor taste, taking place, as it did, within days of the attack on Trump.
Instead, Trump co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita spoke to the group about his therapeutic trips to the gun range and worries about accidentally taking his (legal) weapon to the airport. And members of Congress spoke about the need to stand firm in the face of any new attempts to limit the ownership of such powerful semi-automatic weapons.
Texas Rep. Wesley Hunt (R) was adamant: The left, he said, is going to “use the AR-15 as a scapegoat to infringe on your rights. They are going to demonize AR-15s” and make out the people who own them as a bunch of “crazed mass shooters.” He claimed that assault weapons were used in only a small portion of US gun homicides committed every year. Hunt warned the audience to be vigilant lest the Democrats use the AR-15 as a “Trojan horse” to take away their Second Amendment rights.
After his talk, I asked him if he thought that Democrats in Congress would use the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump to try to revive the assault weapon ban. “No, they won’t,” he said. “They won’t because the assassination attempt was against President Trump.”
Hunt was particularly vociferous in his defense of the assault weapon, but the attack on Trump doesn’t seem to have caused any shift among Republicans when it comes to gun control. Delegates and others I spoke with at the convention voiced little enthusiasm for bringing back a ban on assault weapons. There’s even an AR-15 giveaway going on in the convention center.
Abby Vesoulis/Mother Jones
I waited in the security line to get into the hotel hosting Tuesday’s concealed carry event with Jay Kemmerer, the wealthy pro-Trump co-owner of the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in Wyoming, and an influential Republican who helped knock Liz Cheney out of Congress. He was dressed in a fancy American flag shirt and a straw cowboy hat, with every possible convention credential hanging from his neck. I figured he had a pretty good handle on where the party stood on the issue.
I asked him if he thought Republicans might be more open to bringing back the assault weapon ban in light of the assassination attempt on Trump. He told me he thought the Republican Party still believes people should keep their guns. “Assault weapons? You could probably debate that,” he said thoughtfully. But not right now. At the moment, he said, the party was focused on its unity message and getting Trump elected. “There’s another time for that debate.”
