President Donald J. Trump has been attending the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting every year for nearly a decade. Trump did not make it to the 2025 NRAAM, but did send in a video message. Pundits have been skeptical of Trump’s pro Second Amendment stance, however advocacy groups have been meeting with the administration as early as one week after the election.
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Last year, Trump canceled an appearance just before the election with the NRA and did not commit to attending the 2025 meeting. This gave cause for some to speculate that Trump has waived on his support of the organization, and perhaps the Second Amendment. While President Trump was not present at the NRAAM, he did send a video message to the membership.
What’s going on with Trump and the Second Amendment?
Just prior to the election, then candidate Trump canceled a speaking engagement with the NRA. The October rally was supposed to host Trump. Campaign officials stated that he could not attend due to a “scheduling conflict.”
With President Trump just past his first 100 days in office of his second term, pundits and activists have been critical of how the president has been handling the matter of the Second Amendment. Whether or not there was immediate action when Trump was inaugurated has been up for debate.
While there may not seem to have been sweeping and public moves on preserving the Second Amendment, there has been movement. On January 22, two days after Trump’s inauguration, it was reported that the White House Gun Violence Prevention website was taken down. Since that move, anything overly public has been quiet or subdued until recently.
On the morning of April 6, the NRA X account posted a video message from President Trump. Trump had a message for the members and officers of the Association:
Very special hello to the thousands of hard working patriots at the NRA and thank you for your incredible commitment to defending our Second Amendment rights. I especially want to thank NRA President Bob Barr, special guy and Executive Vice President and CEO Doug Hamlin and the entire staff over at the NRA. A congratulations on 50 years of courageous leadership by the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, and you give it a lot of action. That’s for sure, over the past three months, our new administration has accomplished more than most administrations accomplish in four years, or even eight years. Starting on day one, I ended Joe Biden’s attacks on the right to keep and bear arms. They attacked it like nobody’s ever attacked it before. Fortunately, he’s grossly incompetent and he wasn’t able to do much. I abolish their so-called “zero tolerance” policy to put law abiding gun dealers out of business for a simple error in paperwork. That’s what happens. And the ATF is ending Biden’s unconstitutional pistol brace rule. And we have launched a Second Amendment task force led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who is fantastic, by the way, that will crack down on the attacks on gun rights by Democrat run cities and states. They really have become radicalized, and we are winning all the way. This is just the beginning. There’s much more to come. Americans are born free, and under the Trump administrations, we will live free, always live for free. With me in the White House, your sacred rights will not be infringed. Thank you once again, to everyone at the NRA, thank you for your incredible support over the years. You’ve always endorsed me, and I’ve always come through for you. Have a great event. Thank you.
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Trump’s speech, while not very long, was supportive of the Association. President Trump paying particular attention to the elected and paid leadership of the organization says something. Expressing thanks to NRA President Bob Barr and Executive Vice President Doug Hamlin by their names shows connection. Trump also saluted the efforts of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.
“We are grateful to President Trump for addressing NRA members via video message when he couldn’t join us in Atlanta,” John Commerford, the executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, told Bearing Arms in a statement. “As an NRA Life member, President Trump stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the NRA in defense of the Second Amendment. In the first three months of his administration, President Trump has already reversed Biden-era infringements and tasked the executive branch with protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Gun owners and NRA members have an unwavering supporter in the White House.”
Reported earlier this year, Trump did recognize the NRA during a victory rally. The night before his inauguration, Trump mentioned the Association in a speech, “I have to tell ya, we had great support from every gun group, including the NRA…Really worked hard.”
“I was at the Starlight Inauguration Ball on Monday night the 20th of January, the next day,” Doug Hamlin the CEO and executive director of the NRA told Bearing Arms during an interview on February 2. “I had been at the victory rally where he called out the NRA by name, and I had three current cabinet ranking officials that have since been confirmed, that I shook hands with on Monday evening, and three of them said to me, ‘You guys got a shout out from the President yesterday.’”
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Hamlin further said, “People in Washington are well aware of the influence and the level of relationship, the deep relationship that NRA has had with President Trump going back to 2016.”
Critics state that the Trump administration is not doing enough or moving fast enough. Some behind the scenes work seems to be occurring.
In the period between election day 2024 and the inauguration, advocates have engaged with then President-elect Trump.
During the November 10, 2024 post-election episode of Mark Walters’ Armed American Radio, Alan Gottlieb discussed a series of meetings he was going to attend the upcoming week. Gottlieb is the founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, and chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
“It would have been catastrophic–a loss [in the election] would have been catastrophic to our gun rights, correct?” Walters said to Gottlieb during the interview.
“I would say so. We would have been in worse shape coming up with the future of gun rights than we’ve been in a long time,” Gottlieb said to Walters. “So I’m extremely pleased. And let your listeners know that I will be at Mar-a-Lago, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. And I’ll be pushing our agenda and our people, and we have–we now have input and say back at the White House.”
Other gun rights groups have also been engaged with or are actively engaging with the administration. On April 16, Cody J. Wisniewski from the Firearms Policy Coalition Action Foundation joined Cam Edwards on an episode of Cam and Co. Wisniewski is the president of FPC-AF.
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Edwards and Wisniewski discussed a proposed list of actions that the White House should take. FPC’s “proposed list of executive actions that FPC released just a few days ago [came] after meeting with the White House,” Edwards stated. He asked Wisniewski if he could talk about the meeting.
“FPC has already publicly stated that it happened,” Wisniewski said. While he was not willing or able to disclose who they spoke to within the administration, he said, “I can say that [..] the White House has been very receptive.”
“We talk a lot about how slow the gears of litigation are and how courts are,” Wisniewski added. “Government’s definitely a little bit faster, but not much. And so I think that’s part of it–I think part of the reason that–it’s, you know, April, and we’re seeing big announcements now.”
On Gun Talk Radio with Tom Gresham, while at the NRAAM, Commerford talked on behalf of the organization and efforts of NRA-ILA concerning communications with the White House. “I won’t say names from the White House,” Commerford teased, “but someone senior there told me, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this, and you guys will be very happy.’ What does that mean? Well, I think it’s I think I may have mentioned last time we talked, we provided the White House with a 30 plus page document, so-called wish list of items that needed to be fixed and furthering things.”
On that list, Commerford said the reversal of the frames and receivers rule was on page one. He said that they ended the report “advocating to reopen the machine gun amnesty” on pre-1986 machine guns.
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“The fact is, the senior leadership in the U.S. Congress, and the senior leadership within the…President Trump[‘s] staff, they called the NRA first,” Commerford continued. “And we have, we have alumni from our staff in the White House right now who worked for NRA. So, they make that call. But a lot of these things get done in private. That’s just the nature of politics, and we can’t talk about everything we’re working on because then they won’t call us.”
Gresham talked a little about those critical of the Association and his view. “I keep hearing people say, ‘Well, you know, the NRA, why are you even going to the NRA? It’s, it’s, you know, they’re not really protecting gun rights.’” He said. “Are you kidding me? I mean, they’re at the lead. Always have been at the lead, and, yeah, there’s been a bad we’ve had, what? Five years of nastiness with the leadership? Those guys have gone, and come Monday [April 28], more of them are going to be gone, because I think they’re going to be replacing the officers, some of the officers, and that’s a good thing, because reformers won in the Board election.”
Whether or not Trump’s failure to attend last year’s pre-election NRA rally or the NRAAM this year, amounts to anything more than the scheduling conflicts cited, is hard to say. What does seem to be apparent is that the leadership from the National Rifle Association/Institute for Legislative Action, Second Amendment Foundation/Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Firearms Policy Coalition/Action Foundation are all in communication with the White House on one level or another.
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The national groups are also communicating with each other and have been working together–as most of them have been for years. More recent litigation efforts out of Colorado challenging an excise tax is indicative of these collaborative efforts. Langston v. Humphreys was filed on March 31 and the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Magnum Shooting Center of Colorado Springs, and the Colorado State Shooting Association are all plaintiffs in that case.
Things may seem slow moving and stagnant concerning the Second Amendment under the Trump administration, but all bellwethers point to work getting done. What’s going to come of the relationships between the NRA, other organizations, and the White House? We’ll just have to stay tuned to see what happens.
