President Donald Trump spoke at the NRA convention. (Dave Workman)
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
President Donald Trump thanked an energized crowd of several thousand National Rifle Association members Friday in Atlanta for making a difference in the November election, and promised, “You came through for me and I am going to come through for you.”
“I am here to deliver good news,” Trump said. “The eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end.”
The huge crowd broke into cheers and applause as Trump — the first sitting president to visit with the NRA since Ronald Reagan more than three decades ago — took it all in with an appreciative smile.
Trump appeared before the NRA leadership conference in 2016 to get the earliest-ever endorsement from the association of any presidential candidate. He promised then that if he won the election he would appoint a Supreme Court justice who would adhere to the Constitution.
He contended that promise was fulfilled by the appointment of Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, filling a seat left vacant by the passing of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia early last year.
Trump promised to work with NRA leadership to protect the outdoors, and he noted that one of the first things to happened in his administration was a reversal of a last-minute Barack Obama administration order to ban the use of lead ammunition on federal lands. That order came on the first day Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was in office.
Trump also said that the right of self-defense for “all Americans” will be protected under his administration.
“We can’t be complacent,” Trump said. “These are dangerous times.” He promised once again to “build a wall” to keep illegal aliens out of the country, noting that since he took office, illegal border crossings have declined by an estimated 73 percent.
Leading up to Trump’s speech were remarks from Chris Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist and Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president.
Cox brought loud cheers from the audience when he recalled how the news media had made something of an issue out of the crowd size estimate from Trump’s inauguration. But the only number that really mattered, Cox observed, “was the number of people who watched Hillary Clinton’s inauguration…zero!”
LaPierre, who has been with NRA nearly four decades and its CEO for more than 20 years, declared that the three greatest threats to America are “academic elites, political elites and media elites.” There were dozens of members of local and national news organizations in the press section.
He told the audience that there is an “intense war” being waged by “leftist zealots” determined to destroy Trump’s presidency. LaPierre asserted that “the media, they were in on the lie from the beginning.”
He contended that, “the truth doesn’t matter” to today’s media. He said there is “no limit” on how far the truth can be stretched.
There has been a long-standing belief among gun owners that the mainstream press has been dishonest and one-sided about the Second Amendment. Friday’s appearance by the president might be difficult to misrepresent, because Trump removed any doubt that he is firmly on the side of firearms owners.
