Gun Owners ‘Can Breathe Again’: Trump’s Win Emboldens Advocates

HOUSTON — Before the election, gun rights activists were so worried Hillary Clinton would win the presidency that some of them bought extra ammunition and guns, fearing a crackdown on certain weapons, bullets and magazines.

They’re not worried now. Instead, since the election of Donald J. Trump, gun advocates have been rejoicing, crowing about their political clout and plotting ways to eliminate many remaining curbs on gun ownership and use as they await one of the most vocal pro-gun presidential candidates ever to enter the White House.

“We’ve been threatened. We’ve been bullied. We’ve been ridiculed for eight years,” said Alice Tripp, legislative director of the Texas State Rifle Association, the state affiliate of the National Rifle Association. “I expect the tone to change. If tone sets policy, then we’ve got it made.”

It was more than just the outcome of the presidential race. Gun advocates played a role in flipping the State Senate in Iowa from blue to red and helped defeat a ballot initiative in Maine that would have required universal background checks for gun sales.

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The National Rifle Association spent $50.2 million in seven races this year by supporting Mr. Trump and six Republican Senate candidates, and it lost only one race in Nevada, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics and The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that covers gun violence.

“Smart politicians all across the country are realizing that if we don’t play ball with the Second Amendment we will find ourselves unemployed,” said Aaron Dorr, executive director of Iowa Gun Owners, whose members distributed information about candidates perceived as hostile to the Second Amendment in five State Senate districts. In each, the Democratic incumbent lost.

In Kansas and Indiana, voters approved amendments enshrining the right to hunt and fish in their Constitutions. And in Maine, David Trahan, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, which opposed the ballot question on universal background checks there, said concerns about restricting lawful gun transfers and a sense that outsiders were dictating Maine’s political process had led to a backlash. The measure was backed by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group founded in part by Michael R. Bloomberg, a former mayor of New York.
Supporters of gun control said the national situation was more nuanced than the gun activists’ jubilation suggested. They said it was impossible to say what role gun issues had played in Mr. Trump’s victory and disputed that the election was a national referendum on gun rights. Of the four high-profile state ballot measures, gun-control advocates won three and lost one, in Maine.

In Washington State, voters passed an initiative allowing for emergency court orders to temporarily block the right to possess a gun for people perceived as being at a higher risk of harming themselves or another person. Californians passed a measure requiring background checks to buy ammunition. And Nevada voters approved a ballot measure requiring background checks for almost all gun transfers, beyond what is required by federal law.

Jennifer Crowe, who campaigned for the background check measure in Nevada, known as Question 1, said concerns about homicides and unchecked online gun sales had helped her side win despite opposition.

“The more we spoke about the online marketplace and how robust it is, the more people seemed to understand the importance of Question 1 as a public safety measure,” Ms. Crowe said.
Erika Soto Lamb, a spokeswoman for Everytown for Gun Safety, which supported the ballot items in Maine, Washington State and Nevada, said the only “true referendums on how Americans view the issue of gun safety are the ballot measures.” She said the open discussion of gun control in the campaign and the state-level wins suggested that “what has long been considered a third-rail issue was in fact a winning issue.”
Gun rights advocates say just the opposite, calling Mrs. Clinton’s defeat a sign that gun control is an untouchable issue and anticipating an expansion of gun rights with a Trump administration and a Republican-majority Congress.

One of the policies being discussed would lift the restrictions that prohibit service members on military bases and at recruiting centers from being armed. Weapons rules at most military bases and centers prohibit service members who are not police or security personnel from carrying firearms, and Mr. Trump has said he supports banning so-called gun-free zones on military bases. The issue gained new attention after shootings at military sites, including at Fort Hood, Tex., and in Chattanooga, Tenn.

“If Nidal Hasan had had somebody shoot him back, he might have hurt and even killed a few people, but he wouldn’t have killed as many as he did,” said Valente Gonzalez, an administrator for the advocacy group Open Carry Texas in the Houston area, referring to the gunman who killed 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009. “Disarming law-abiding people invites chaos.”

Other policies include a national right to carry, which would allow those with concealed-handgun permits in one state to have their permits honored in the other 49 states. Such a move, known as national reciprocity, also has the backing of Mr. Trump. There is also a push to make silencers easier and less costly to purchase by removing them from the National Firearms Act.

“We want broad deregulation of firearms,” said Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights. “It’s high time Republican majorities in the executive and legislative branches come in and make some broad, broad changes. As the saying goes, ‘Dance with the ones who brung ya.’”

Some gun owners were as surprised as anyone by Mr. Trump’s upset victory. C .J. Grisham, a retired Army sergeant and the president of Open Carry Texas, bought two AR-15 rifles and an ammunition-making kit shortly before the election, out of concern about a possible Clinton victory.

“A lot of people in the gun rights community can breathe again,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is complaining that they went and bought extra guns.”

Mr. Trump was outspoken about his support for gun rights. He boasted that his two adult sons were avid hunters. One of his first policy papers was on the Second Amendment, writing that the “government has no business dictating what types of firearms good, honest people are allowed to own.” And he talked about his New York-issued license to carry a concealed weapon and suggested he was prepared to use it.
“Somebody attacks me, oh, they’re gonna be shocked,” Mr. Trump said during a speech in Tennessee in 2015, comparing any such attack to “Death Wish,” the 1970s vigilante movie, and repeatedly using his right hand to pretend to pull a pistol from his suit. “Can you imagine? Somebody says: ‘Oh, there’s Trump. He’s easy pickings.’”

Although Mr. Trump won the endorsement of the N.R.A., his support among gun activists was not universal. Some were skeptical of him, citing comments he had made in years past that he supported an assault-weapons ban. Others noticed that Mr. Trump’s plan for his first 100 days in office, released before the election, did not include any gun issues. And at least one of his gun initiatives — a national right to carry — has been criticized by gun advocates who do not want the federal government involved in concealed-carry permitting. Some gun activists said the election was as much about defeating Mrs. Clinton as it was about supporting Mr. Trump.

“Whether they were supportive of Trump or not — and I know many who were not — they were more concerned about what a Clinton presidency would do,” said Rod Moeller, president of the Nebraska Firearms Owners Association.