The Supreme Court on Friday lifted the nationwide ban on bump stocks that former President Donald Trump had tried to implement, but his campaign had relatively little say in the matter.
“The Court has spoken and their decision must be respected,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s campaign press secretary, said in a statement.
Leavitt then highlighted the support he received from the National Rifle Association earlier this year.
“President Trump has been and always will be a fierce defender of America’s Second Amendment rights, and he is proud to be endorsed by the NRA,” Leavitt said Friday.
The Supreme Court’s decision focused on the power of federal regulators to ban bump stocks, simple devices that allow semiautomatic rifles to spray bullets much faster. The majority — including three judges chosen by Trump — concluded that Congress, not the agency Trump directed, should take action to ban the devices.
But Trump’s statement Friday did not include a call for Congress to act.
Instead, Leavitt turned to immigration, claiming that “the right to keep and bear arms has never been more critical” at a time when “our border is open to terrorists and criminals.”
“Joe Biden wants to take that right away from law-abiding Americans,” Leavitt said. “President Trump will not let that happen.”
The Trump campaign’s statement was in stark contrast to the message from President Joe Biden, who issued a statement denouncing the “mass devastation” that bump stocks could cause.
“I’m calling on Congress to ban stocks, pass an assault weapons ban and take additional action to save lives – send me a bill and I will sign it immediately,” Biden said.
When Trump announced in 2018 that his administration was pursuing a ban on bump stocks, the then-president acknowledged the power they have, saying that devices like bump stocks “turn legal weapons into machine guns.”
He issued a statement boasting that he was going further on the bump stock issue than President Barack Obama had gone before him.
Trump made that announcement just after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which occurred about four months after a gunman used a bump stock gun to massacre 60 people at a music festival in Las Vegas , Nevada.
While Trump has repeatedly shown a willingness to criticize the nation’s courts when they rule against him, in this case he has chosen not to do so.
He seems eager not to get on the wrong side of the NRA. At a conference earlier this year, he told attendees that “no one will lay a finger on your guns” if he wins.
“Any Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will end in my very first week back in office, perhaps on my first day,” Trump said in February.
