ATLANTA (AP) — Groups seeking stricter gun laws have built political power through multiple elections, fueled by outrage following mass shootings at schools and other public places, not to mention the country’s daily gun violence.
Now, gun control advocates and many Democrats see additional openings created by the hardline positions of the gun lobby and its most influential champion, former President Donald Trump. They also point to the controversies surrounding the National Rifle Association, which has undergone a change in leadership and a decline in membership after it emerged that a key former executive had charged for private jet flights and accepted vacations from group vendors.
“It’s a bad call to suggest that you have to be pro-Second Amendment or you’re going to want to take away everyone’s guns,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday in Maryland, speaking as part of a series of White House talks. campaign events focused on gun violence. President Joe Biden will speak Tuesday at a conference hosted by Everytown for Gun Safety Action Fund.
Biden’s campaign says gun control could be a motivating issue for college-educated suburban women who could be decisive in several key battlegrounds this fall. The campaign and its allies have already circulated clips of Trump saying, “We’ve got to get over it,” after an Iowa school shooting in January, then telling NRA members in May that he would do “nothing” during his presidency weapons did.
There have been 15 mass killings so far in 2024, according to data from The Associated Press. A mass murder is defined as an attack that kills four or more people, not including the perpetrator, within a 24-hour period.
Asked for comment, the Trump campaign pointed to the former president’s previous statements in which he pledged not to enact new gun regulations if he returns to the White House.
Trump has spoken twice at NRA events this year and was endorsed by the group in May. He claimed that Biden “has 40 years of experience ripping firearms out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.” His campaign and the Republican National Committee also announced the formation of a new “Gun Owners for Trump” coalition, which also includes gun rights activists and people who work in the firearms industry.
About seven in 10 college-educated women who voted in the 2022 midterm elections supported stricter gun control laws, although fewer than one in 10 cited it as the country’s biggest problem, according to AP VoteCast, a broad-based survey of voters .
An August 2023 AP-NORC poll found that about six in 10 independent voters said they wanted stricter gun laws. Only about a third of Republicans wanted expanded gun legislation, while about 9 in 10 Democrats were in favor.
The Biden White House gets high marks from gun control advocates
Biden and Harris are highlighting their action on gun policy, especially the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022, a compromise brokered after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The law expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers, tried to make it harder for domestic abusers to obtain guns and allocated billions of dollars to programs aimed at curbing gun violence.
It is the most sweeping federal gun legislation since a ban on certain semi-automatic weapons was signed into law in 1994; that ban expired ten years later.
Biden has also revived the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and he is the first president to create a White House office dedicated to gun violence prevention.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of Moms Demand Action, called the Biden White House “the strongest administration we have ever seen on this issue.”
Going beyond the 2022 law to require background checks on all potential gun buyers received bipartisan support, with about 9 in 10 Democrats and about 7 in 10 Republicans in favor, according to AP VoteCast data. A majority of American adults wanted a nationwide ban on the sale of AR-15-style rifles, which can fire many bullets quickly and are routinely used in mass shootings.
On Thursday, Harris helped lead a meeting of health care leaders that West Wing aides highlighted as the first White House summit to discuss guns as a public health crisis. On Friday, she discussed guns with Students for Biden, continuing a theme from her recent speeches on college campuses across the country.
Gun control advocates point to a potentially wider reach that extends to different parts of Democrats’ coalition in the recent election: parents of schoolchildren, younger voters who grew up in an era of school shootings and security drills, and black and Hispanic voters. Biden’s approval among some of these groups has fallen during his tenure in the White House.
“The political calculus has changed so dramatically in this area in a relatively short period of time,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. Gun legislation, he said, was “an issue that elected officials once ran from and are now running toward.”
A still powerful NRA
The NRA did not respond to a request for comment. Despite a series of headwinds, it still remains a force in Republican politics. Wayne LaPierre, once one of the country’s most powerful lobbyists, was found liable by a New York court for spending NRA funds on himself and eventually resigned. The NRA’s membership and revenues declined.
Ferrell-Zabala of Moms Demand Action labeled the group as “flailing.” She said the disorder has pushed some of the most conservative activists toward fast-growing groups like Gun Owners of America. The group, which describes itself as “the only uncompromising gun lobby in Washington,” essentially opposes any restrictions on gun ownership and possession.
Matthew Lacombe, a professor at Case Western Reserve University who studies gun politics, said the NRA’s advocacy was a factor in Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Lacombe warned that the NRA remains a force and “represents an entrenched base.” for Trump.
“It’s part of a broader cultural identity” that goes beyond guns, he said, although he added that the dynamics in the broader electorate have changed.
“There was a time when the NRA successfully labeled gun control advocates as the extremists in this debate,” Lacombe said. “I don’t think most Americans see the idea of gun control as extreme anymore. This way they see the other side.”
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Associated Press writers Amelia Thomson DeVeaux in Washington and Will Weissert in Landover, Maryland, contributed to this report.
