On April 12 the NRA announced that Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump will speak at the NRA-ILA leadership forum on May 20.
The NRA is holding its Annual Meetings and Exhibits May 19-22, and Trump will join a cadre of speakers that include NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre, NRA-ILA executive director Chris Cox, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke Jr., Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TX), Conservative Journalist Katie Pavlich, and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), among others.
Trump spoke at the NRA’s Annual Meetings and Exhibits in Nashville on April 10, 2015. Breitbart News spoke with Trump the next day and he said:
It is so important that we maintain the Second Amendment and that we maintain it strongly. And one of the main reasons is because the good people, the upstanding people, follow laws and norms but the bad ones don’t. So if the Second Amendment weren’t there to protect our rights and someone tampered with them, the good people would be affected but the bad people wouldn’t care–they couldn’t care less.
It is absolutely imperative that we maintain the Second Amendment in its strongest form.
We asked him to explain the benefit armed people have over people in countries where arms are disallowed. He answered the question by contrasting parts of the U.S. where gun control prevents law-abiding citizens from being armed versus parts of the U.S. where the Second Amendment reigns supreme. Trump said:
You look at our country, and you look at certain areas like Chicago, and New York, and various other places, the areas with the most restrictive gun laws are the ones with the most crime. It’s a very interesting phenomenon. Chicago probably has the most restrictive gun laws in the United States and they have massive amounts of shootings and killings.
It just seems that when you look at what’s going on, the areas that are most heavily restricted have the most crime. This is something people should notice and look at very strongly.
Trump released his firearm policy paper on September 18, 2015, in which he called for national reciprocity for concealed carry and stressed that “concealed carry … is a right, not a privilege.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com