The party’s neglect of the issue is consistent with its domination by Donald Trump, who pays lip service to the Second Amendment but has never been a true believer.
The 2016 Republican Party platform, which condemned Democrats for proposing laws that would “eviscerate the Second Amendment,” devoted three paragraphs to gun rights. The 2020 platform did not discuss the subject at all because there was no 2020 platform; the party instead promised to “enthusiastically support the President’s America-first agenda.” This time around, the Republican National Committee (RNC) did approve a platform. But as The Reload‘s Jake Fogleman notes, the RNC has excised any mention of the Second Amendment except for a passing reference.
That reference appears in a list of “twenty promises that we will accomplish
very quickly when we win the White House and Republican Majorities in the House and Senate.” The seventh promise says Republicans will “defend our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and the right to keep and bear arms.”
This cursory treatment of the Second Amendment is consistent with the reality that the current Republican Party wants whatever former President Donald Trump wants. Despite his lip service to the right of armed self-defense, Trump has never been a true believer, as his flirtation with the Democratic gun control agenda after the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas illustrated.
By Jacob Sullum
