More than a week after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump with an assault weapon, his political supporters and fellow members of the Republican party have remained silent on the issue of tightening America’s notoriously lax gun control laws.
That intransigence plays out against the backdrop of a US election that was already deeply marred by fears of political violence and the possibility of civil unrest before a 20-year-old gunman fired a AR-15-style rifle at the former president, injuring him and two others and killing one rally-goer at an event in Pennsylvania.
Opposition to almost any form of gun law reform, such as a ban on assault weapons, has become a modern-day litmus test for Republicans seeking public office, according to experts in the field. The week since the shooting has seen no meaningful statements on gun control from Republican figures.
“The Republican party is dead set against any new gun reform, and any Republican that opposes that view is subject to a primary challenge,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor and gun rights expert.
That marks a change from the aftermath of previous assassinations, or assassination attempts, of people like former US president Ronald Reagan, when lawmakers from both parties approved legislation to tighten gun laws.
After John Hinckley Jr shot Reagan and three others, including the president’s press secretary, James Brady, in 1981, Brady and his wife, Sarah, spearheaded a successful effort to establish a federal background check system for prospective gun purchasers, which federally licensed dealers were eventually required to use. Reagan, a Republican, expressed support for the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and former president Bill Clinton signed it into law in 1993.
Clinton also approved a Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994 with significant bipartisan support, including from Reagan and some congressional Republicans.
But to gain their support, lawmakers limited the ban to 10 years, and Republicans allowed it to expire in 2004.
Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to kill Trump at a campaign rally on 13 July in Pennsylvania with an assault weapon, an AR-15-style rifle, which has been used at many mass shootings in recent decades, including in 2012 at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut and in 2017 at a music festival in Las Vegas.
Gun control groups like Brady: United Against Gun Violence and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have since advocated for a ban on assault weapons, but Republican lawmakers have opposed those efforts.
Winkler and other experts do not expect that Republican intransigence to change despite Trump’s popularity.
“If the shooting of 20 kindergarten students” at Sandy Hook “doesn’t prompt reconsideration of gun safety reform, then it’s not clear what will, and I think that from the perspective of conservatives, the answer is typically: more guns,” Winkler said.
The National Rifle Association, which has led efforts to oppose gun reform, declined an interview request, but a spokesperson said in a statement, “Given what information has been shared thus far, there isn’t a single gun control law that could have prevented this heinous and cowardly attack – including so-called ‘universal’ background checks. But, as we all know, that will not stop the gun control lobby and their allies from engaging in the usual calls for gun control.”
A senior Trump campaign adviser also told Reuters that if the Republican is elected, “we’ll see a continuation of supporting and defending the second amendment”.
Kris Brown, president of the Brady campaign, disagrees with the NRA’s assertion that stricter gun laws, like an assault weapons ban, could not have prevented the shooting at the Trump rally.
Crooks “chose this weapon because he was sitting on top of a building that was” about 400ft away “and the only way he would have made that shot that injured the president, that killed someone else, that injured another person, is with an assault-style weapon. So by definition, if we had an assault ban in effect, yeah, that could have made a difference”, Brown said.
Joshua Horwitz, a professor in gun violence prevention and advocacy at Johns Hopkins University, expects that Republicans in Congress will focus on the Secret Service and questions about how the shooter was allowed to get so close to Trump rather than a discussion about the weapon used.
“The Republicans in the US House are not going to hold hearings on banning assault weapons,” Horwitz said.
Interestingly, the Republican National Committee platform, which was released about a week before the assassination attempt, mentions defending “the right to keep and bear arms” in a preamble but otherwise makes no mention of gun policy.
That is the first time the party has not included firearms issues in its platform since the 1970s, according to Robert Spitzer, an adjunct professor at William & Mary Law School who has studied gun policy for decades.
But Spitzer does not see that as an indication of a new openness to strengthening gun laws.
“I think it’s purely pragmatic on Trump’s part to avoid controversial issues that might cut into support he would otherwise get,” Spitzer said.
Still, gun control advocates have made progress at the state level. In recent years, states such as Illinois and Delaware have passed bans on assault weapons. Nine states now prohibit the purchase and possession of such weapons, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun control advocacy group.
In 2022, the federal government also passed legislation with support from Democrats and some Republicans that included measures to expand background checks on people between the ages of 18 and 21 seeking to buy a gun and provided incentives for states to pass red flag laws, which allow people to petition for the temporary confiscation of an individual’s firearms if that person is considered a risk to themself or others.
“There’s a clear plan for building a strong gun-violence-prevention infrastructure and passing legislation and changing policies” and spending more money on “community violence intervention, so I’m optimistic about a lot of where the movement is going”, Horwitz said. “I guess I would say I’m pessimistic that this particular shooting is going to change the debate.”
