ATLANTA (AP) — Groups advocating for stricter gun laws have gained political clout over the course of several elections, emboldened by the outcry following mass shootings at schools and other public places — not to mention the daily gun violence across the country.
Now gun control advocates and many Democrats see additional opportunities in the hard-line positions of the gun lobby and its most influential advocate, former President Donald Trump. They also point to controversies surrounding the National Rifle Association, which experienced leadership changes and membership losses after a key former executive billed for private flights and accepted vacations from the group’s suppliers.
“It’s a false assumption that you have to be for the Second Amendment or take away everyone’s guns,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday in Maryland, speaking as part of a series of White House and campaign events on gun violence. President Joe Biden will speak Tuesday at a conference hosted by the Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund.
The Biden campaign says gun control could be a motivating issue for college-educated suburban women who could be decisive in several key battleground states this fall. The campaign and its allies have already circulated clips of Trump saying “we’ve got to get over this” after an Iowa school shooting in January, and then telling NRA members in May that he had done “nothing” on guns during his presidency.
According to data from the Associated Press, there have been 15 mass murders so far in 2024. A mass murder is defined as an attack in which four or more people (not including the perpetrator) are killed within 24 hours.
When asked for comment, the Trump team referred to previous statements by the former president in which he promised that there would be no novel gun laws if he returned to the White House.
Trump has spoken at NRA events twice this year and was endorsed by the group in May, claiming that Biden has “been trying to take away firearms from law-abiding citizens for 40 years.” His campaign and the Republican National Committee also announced the formation of a novel coalition, “Gun Owners for Trump,” which includes gun rights activists and people involved in the gun industry.
According to AP VoteCast, a comprehensive poll of voters, about seven in 10 college graduates who voted in the 2022 midterm elections supported stricter gun control laws, although fewer than one in 10 called them the country’s biggest problem.
An AP-NORC poll conducted in August 2023 found that about 6 in 10 independent voters wanted stricter gun laws. Only about a third of Republicans wanted more comprehensive gun control legislation, while about 9 in 10 Democrats were in favor.
Biden’s White House gets high marks from gun control advocates
Biden and Harris are highlighting their actions on gun policy, particularly the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, a compromise negotiated after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The law expanded background checks for recent gun buyers, sought to make it harder for domestic abusers to get guns and provided billions of dollars for programs to curb gun violence.
It is the most comprehensive federal gun control law since a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons was passed in 1994; that ban expired a decade later.
Biden also gave novel impetus to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and is the first president to establish a dedicated gun violence prevention office in the White House.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, called the Biden White House “the strongest administration we’ve ever seen on this issue.”
According to AP VoteCast data, a requirement beyond the 2022 law to enforce background checks on all potential gun buyers found bipartisan support: About 9 in 10 Democrats and about 7 in 10 Republicans favored it. A majority of American adults wanted a nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15-style rifles, which can fire many rounds quickly and are routinely used in mass shootings.
On Thursday, Harris helped lead a meeting of health experts that West Wing aides said was the first such meeting at the White House to discuss guns as a public health crisis. On Friday, she discussed guns with Students for Biden, continuing a theme of her recent speeches on college campuses across the country.
Gun control advocates point to a potentially broader reach that extended to several parts of the Democratic coalition in the last election: parents of school-age children, younger voters who grew up in an era of school shootings and safety drills, and black and Hispanic voters. Biden’s approval ratings among some of these groups have fallen during his tenure in the White House.
“The political calculations have changed so dramatically on this issue in a relatively short period of time,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. Gun legislation, he said, is “an issue that elected officials used to run away from and are now moving toward.”
A still powerful NRA
The NRA did not respond to a request for comment. Despite a number of headwinds, it remains a driving force in Republican politics. Wayne LaPierre, once one of the country’s most powerful lobbyists, was found guilty by a New York court of spending NRA money on himself and eventually resigned. NRA membership and revenues declined.
Ferrell-Zabala of Moms Demand Action called the group “flagging.” She said the confusion has driven some of the most conservative activists to emerging groups like Gun Owners of America. The group bills itself as “the only hardline gun lobby in Washington” and essentially opposes any restrictions on gun ownership.
Matthew Lacombe, a professor at Case Western Reserve University and a gun policy scholar, said NRA support was a factor in Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Lacombe warned that the NRA remains a force and “represents an established base” for Trump.
“It’s part of a broader cultural identity” that goes beyond guns, he said, but added that the dynamics have shifted within the broader electorate.
“There was a time when the NRA was successful in branding gun control advocates as extremists in this debate,” Lacombe said. “I don’t think most Americans today see the idea of gun control as extreme. They see the other side the same way.”
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Associated Press writers Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington and Will Weissert in Landover, Maryland, contributed to this report.
