ATF’s New Rule For Targeting Gun Owners

[belvedere]

I didn't hear anything from either side either during the election either. That's what kinda worries me. Trump didn't come out strong or come out at all on the Second Amendment like he did last time. The only thing I heard was some absurd horseshit about Trump making the whole USA have reciprocity on pistol permits. All this bunch around here lost their mind about "YEAH TRUMP GONNA DO NATIONAL RECIPROCITY !!!" In the first place he can't do that. That's a states rights matter. Everybody keeps saying do it like the drivers license. That's crap. The federal government didn't make states recognize drivers license from other states. The states did that. There is no federal drivers license.
I understand that we are much, much better off with Trump that we would have been with Camel Toe but that "Take the guns first worry about due process later" thing in 2018 shows his mindset. Also the bumpstock ban wasn't a good indication either. I know it got overturned but it cost a lot of people money and after it was overturned they just kinda said "Oop's sorry you got screwed." Also none of the major gun groups came out in strong support of Trump, or at least that I saw. NRA would endorse a penguin if it meant a headline for them and I didn't see squat from them. Trump didn't appear at the NRA convention like he did before. Of course all of this may have been by design so maybe it's all good. I really hope he backs the legal gun owners, and I want to be optimistic, but I don't trust any politician about anything.

 

[double]

Trump ain't your run of the mill politician either.

 

[belvedere]

Run of the mill or not he will and has said one thing and done another. I've heard all these folks say "Oh everyone else is playing checkers and Trump is playing three dimensional chess." My aunt Alice's ass. He has been a democrat and a republican and an independent. He knows how to play to the crowd. He is better than anything we had or was running against him but he ain't the be all end all. I actually liked Cruz better than anybody. I think he is actually smarter than anybody in the government and he has proven he understands the 2nd amendment, Then again the political machine crucified him when he ran and he is still at the end of the day a politician.

 

[belvedere]

Here is a poll from the 2nd amendment foundation maybe it will carry some weight.

Trump Pollster: Americans Want Leaders, Judges Who Strictly Follow Second Amendment
The company that ran President-elect Donald Trump’s polling operation has released a new poll showing widespread support for judges and politicians to prioritize gun rights.
The poll, conducted by McLaughlin and Associates and sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation, was released on Tuesday. It found 77 percent of voters agree it’s “important” that federal judge appointments make it “a priority to try their best to strictly follow the 2nd Amendment.” Another 76 percent said it’s “important” for national political leaders to “protect and defend the 2nd Amendment Rights.” Fewer than 20 percent of respondents said neither was important to them.
“Americans continue to cherish their Second Amendment Rights as the results of our recent national survey clearly show,” Jim McLaughlin, CEO of the polling firm, said in a statement.
Additionally, the poll found 63 precent expect Trump to prioritize protecting their gun rights and 59 percent believe Republicans will do a better job protecting those rights than Democrats.
While the pollster’s partisan affiliation could skew the results, the survey is one of only a handful to examine gun policy preferences in the wake of the election. If the numbers are close to accurate, it would indicate American voters feel strongly about gun rights and that may have contributed to Republicans beating Democrats in last month’s election. It also suggests voters expect Trump and his party to live up to the general gun promises they made during the election.
However, the poll doesn’t devle into any specific policies and Republicans stripped most detailed plans for what they’d do on guns from their 2024 platform. So, it’s unclear what exactly Republicans might do on guns in the next Trump Administration and the poll sheds little light on specific asks voters have for them.
Alan Gottlieb, head of the Second Amendment Foundation, argued the new poll is proof Democrats are out of touch with American voters.
“This survey underscores the prevailing public perception that Democrats have become the ‘party of gun prohibition’,” Gottlieb said in a statement.
McLaughlin and Associates has been a top pollster for Donald Trump since his first run for office nearly a decade ago. It has done internal polling for his campaigns, helping guide him to victory in two of them. But it is also among the lowest ranked polling firms, accorind to FiveThirtyEight. It garnered a .5 out of three stars and 1.1 out of 10 transparancy score from the poll aggregator.
Tuesday’s poll also featured a seven point gap from the RealClearPolitics average when it asked about the direction of the country.
Still, McLaughlin’s most recent election polling ended up very close to the mark. In early October, the Trump Campaign released internal swing state polling done in part by McLaughlin. Those polls ended up correctly predicting Trump would win every swing state and were even within one point of the final margin in five of seven states.
McLaughlin argued the results of the company’s latest poll are evidence of
“It is safe to say that Americans are clearly excited about the results of the November elections and the rights of gun owners remain very important to voters,” McLaughlin said.
Gottlieb said it will bolster gun-rights efforts in the new administration.
“The McLaughlin poll asked five pertinent questions about gun rights, and the results affirm what we’ve known all along,” he said. “Trump’s return to the White House in January, coupled with GOP control on Capitol Hill, bodes well for rights which the current administration has tried to trample for the past four years.”
The Second Amendment Foundation said the poll ran from December 11th through the 14th and had a margin of error of +/- three percentage points. McLaughlin surveyed 1,000 American voters by phone.