Saint Anselm College in Manchester New Hampshire was the back drop for Trump gun culture

Maine Writer:  As a Roman Catholic woman, the misuse of Saint Anselm College in Manchester New Hampshire, used as the venue for Donald Trump to spread his gun culture lies, is an example about how Catholicism continues erode the faith's responsibility to support moral leadership.

This essay is a salient exposure of the Saint Anselm's political misstep:

Guns, Trump, and Republicans: The GOP's right’s push to loosen restrictions is resulting in a judicial and legislative free-for-all that is intersecting, disastrously, with the 2024, U.S. presidential race. By Amy Davidson Sorkin published in The New Yorker.

Illustration in The New Yorker by João Fazenda

Some visions of how to live well in America are inextricably linked to owning a gun. Donald Trump certainly took that view recently, in a CNN town hall at Saint Anselm College, in New Hampshire, before an audience of Republicans and independents. 

Indeed, Trump presented guns as necessary for survival in a dark and violent landscape. “Remember, we have seven hundred million guns—seven hundred million. Many people, if they don’t have a gun, they’re not going to be very safe,” he said. “Many of them would not be alive today.” He condemned Chicago and New York for having tight gun restrictions, praised Brazil for loosening its laws, and called for arming teachers, many of whom, he claimed, are “soldiers, ex-soldiers, ex-policemen” who “really understand weapons.”

Trump’s presentation at Saint Anselm's was so riddled with falsehoods that it hardly registered that his seven-hundred-million figure was wrong. The actual number of guns in the United States is estimated to be close to four hundred million (more than ninety-five per cent of which are in civilian hands). Nevertheless, it’s still a huge number—the U.S. has both more guns and more gun deaths per capita than any other wealthy nation, according to the gun-safety advocacy group Giffords. 

One in every three firearm suicides on the planet occurs in this country.

Yet, in the town hall, when a member of the Saint Anselm College Republicans questioned Trump on the subject, the student asked not about stopping gun violence, but about his concern that, with all the gun violence and mass shootings in the news, politicians would act to “repress gun rights.” 

Moreover, the questioner also wanted to know how Trump would “restore rights that have been taken from us.” It was, oddly enough, one of the few moments when Trump appeared defensive, because the student seemed discontent with his decision, after a shooter killed fifty-eight people in Las Vegas, in 2017, to ban bump stocks, which can effectively allow semi-automatic firearms (which are readily available) to act like machine guns (the purchase of which is very highly restricted). 

Trump replied that he was aligned with the N.R.A. on bump stocks; in fact, the N.R.A. said that it was “disappointed” by the ban.

The exchange captured a number of factors that are converging to make this a particularly critical moment in the story of guns in America. One is judicial: New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, the Supreme Court decision from last summer that struck down New York’s permit requirements for carrying a concealed handgun, has set off a stream of litigation. The majority opinion, written by Clarence Thomas, holds that courts, when looking at gun laws, should begin by presuming that “ordinary, law abiding citizens” basically have the right to own whatever guns they want and to carry them wherever they choose. The burden would then be on the government to show that any limits on that right comport with Thomas’s highly selective sense of the nation’s “historical tradition.” Stephen Breyer, in a dissent, suggested that even the Justices in the majority might not know what laws could survive under the new standard. It’s looking like he was right.

For example, the Saint Anselm student may not need to worry much longer about anyone being deprived of a bump stock. In January, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the ban was unlawful—a decision that the Biden Administration is appealing to the Supreme Court—and the Sixth Circuit did the same last month. And, a few weeks ago, a district-court judge in Virginia, citing Bruen, threw out a federal minimum-age requirement of twenty-one to buy handguns, which would make it legal for people as young as eighteen to do so; several similar cases are being heard.

Gun-rights advocates have also been pressing for new laws to make it easier to be armed. The result is a judicial and legislative free-for-all, that is intersecting, disastrously, with the 2024, Presidential race. Last month, Governor Ron DeSantis, of Florida, who announced his campaign for the Republican nomination, signed a bill allowing most adults to carry concealed guns without a state permit. (Twenty-six other states now have similar laws.) “You don’t need a permission slip from the government to be able to exercise your constitutional rights,” DeSantis said, according to Politico. He was speaking at Adventure Outdoors, in Smyrna, Georgia, an establishment that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution described as a “firearms superstore.” Georgia, of course, will be a battleground state in 2024. But even that reckless posturing wasn’t good enough for some gun advocates in Florida, who complained that DeSantis hadn’t done away with restrictions on openly brandishing a weapon.

The internal dynamics of the G.O.P. appear to be pushing Presidential contenders to increasingly extreme positions. Not that most of them need much prodding on guns: former Vice-President Mike Pence, who has indicated that he is considering running, has long been something of a Second Amendment fundamentalist. 

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and a declared candidate, recently said that focusing on guns as a means to reduce gun violence was “lazy.” And, as the town hall demonstrated, even Trump is not exempt from the pressure. The Bruen decision is part of his legacy—he appointed three of the six Justices who signed the majority opinion. From the perspective of Republican activists, expanding on that victory is now his task, or that of whoever else wants to be President.

Yet there may be a parallel here to the right’s overreach on abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned. There is widespread revulsion at mass violence and the toll that it takes, particularly on children. 

A Gallup poll a few months ago showed that, although most G.O.P. voters don’t want stricter gun laws, a majority don’t want looser ones, either. In a number of blue states, there are efforts under way to pass gun-safety laws that supporters hope will pass scrutiny under Bruen. On Tuesday, for instance, Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, signed legislation restricting the places where people can bring guns—not to schools, hospitals, or polling stations. (The same day, the N.R.A. sued to block the law.)

In contrast, Jim Justice, the Republican governor of West Virginia, signed a “campus carry” bill in March that not only allows guns for those with permits on college and university grounds but directs administrators to provide gun-storage units in dorms. The gun-law terrain has rarely been more unsettled. What makes the impending fight over gun safety, amid an election, all the more hazardous is Trumpism itself, with its incessant invocation of the prospect of political violence, and its message for America: if you want to make your way in this country, make sure that you have a gun.