Making his eighth headlining address to the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday night, former President Donald Trump hailed being "the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House," saying he is the only candidate "standing" in the way of unconstitutional gun control.
"For four incredible years it was my honor to be the best friend gun owners have ever had in the White House by far," Trump told the NRA Great American Outdoor Show Presidential Forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a key battleground state in the 2024 presidential election. "Now I stand before you with a very simple promise: Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president.
"When I'm back in the Oval Office no one will lay a finger on your firearms. It's not going to happen."
Trump and the NRA have maintained a close relationship for nearly a decade.
"During my four years nothing happened," with gun restrictions that are now coming, Trump lamented. "And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns.
"We did nothing. We didn't yield."
Trump joked the NRA — undergoing some turnover in leadership — "better endorse me, that's the only thing I can say" before the presidential election.
"Under Crooked Joe Biden your Second Amendment is again under siege — you know that," Trump said after hailing his administration's work against gun control activists, which have had success under Biden orders in the past three years.
"Under a Trump administration, all of those Biden disasters get ripped up and torn out my first week, but maybe my first day, in office."
That is a claim only Trump can make in this presidential race, he continued.
"The only thing standing between you and the obliteration of your under-siege Second Amendment is me," he said. "Anybody else, you wouldn't have your guns right, no."
The only people the Biden administration is not going after illegal gun-toting criminals, Trump warned.
"If Joe Biden is reelected, your gun rights will be gone, they'll be totally gone — and the sad part about it is that the bad guys aren't giving up their guns," he said.
"Four more years of Joe Biden means four more years of anti-gun communists running the ATF," he concluded. "They're going to run it, they're already — they're running it now, just in case you have any questions.
"But it means hundreds of more radical left judges waging a crusade against law-abiding gun owners, and four more years of Joe Biden means a non-stop war on gun manufacturers, dealers, and sellers designed to put the entire industry right out of business."