Following a previous white paper on immigration, Donald Trump has now released his official positions on guns and the Second Amendment, which can be found on his campaign website.
Trump breaks his positions on the issue to three major points:
- Enforce the laws on the books
- Fix our broken mental health system
- Defend the rights of law-abiding gun owners
Trump calls the Obama administration’s record of enforcing laws against violent criminals “abysmal,” pointing instead to programs like Richmond, Virginia’s Project Exile, which he says was a success and describes in the following way:
[I]f a violent felon uses a gun to commit a crime, you will be prosecuted in federal court and go to prison for five years – no parole or early release.
On mental health, Trump calls out politicians for their failure fix a broken system. He proposes an expansion of care for the vast majority of people with mental illnesses who are not violent.
“But for those who are violent, a danger to themselves or others,” he says. “We need to get them off the street before they can terrorize our communities. This is just common sense.”
On the issue of defending the right of law-abiding gun owners, Trump’s paper calls gun bans “a total failure” and blasts the use of such “scary sounding phrases” as “assault weapons.” This is notable because it represents a change in his opinion since the writing of his 2000 book, ‘The America We Deserve,’ in which he says that he supports an assault weapons ban. (He also said in the book that he supports a slightly longer waiting to buy a gun.)
Trump also says that bans on concealed carry for soldiers on military bases and recruiting centers is “ridiculous.”
Read about his positions on guns in more detail here.
