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During his presidency, Donald Trump tended to make a spectacle whenever he signed new measures, but just one month after taking office, the Republican did the opposite, quietly putting his signature on a measure that much of the country hadn’t heard about.
With the support of the congressional GOP majority in place at the time, which tackled the issue soon after taking office, Trump rolled back an Obama-era regulation and made it easier for people with mental illnesses to purchase guns.
The then-president apparently didn’t think it’d be popular to make it easier for the mentally ill to buy firearms, so he signed the bill with no fanfare.
The move was striking for a variety of reasons, but the timing was of particular interest. In early 2017, Republicans found themselves in control of Congress and the White House for the first time in over a decade. One of their first priorities — one of the first tasks they decided to check off their to-do list — was to take steps to get more people more access to guns.
All of this came to mind this week when House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik spoke to the conservative Washington Times, and talked about what voters could expect from a GOP majority in the chamber, not just over the course of two years, but specifically from the “first 100 days.”
The congresswoman pointed at pre-drafted legislation on several issues, but it was one priority that stood out:
Ms. Stefanik also said that leadership plans to drop several Second Amendment-oriented bills in a GOP-majority House. “There’s concealed-carry reciprocity,” she said, referring to a bill that would make licenses portable among the states. She also cited “the Second Amendment Guarantee Act, which I will reintroduce in the next Congress on the issues of constitutional rights,” which also would preempt most local laws on concealed carry and allow for lawsuits if licenses are denied.
The House GOP leader went on to talk about possible legislation that would prevent credit card companies from creating Merchant Category Code for purchases from gun stores.
“First of all, the credit cards are inaccurately going to tell you that they’re not flagging gun purchases. They are. It is a flag of gun purchases, it is unconstitutional [and] we will use every legislative and oversight tool possible to make sure that they do not infringe on constitutional rights,” Stefanik said, calling it a move “towards a national gun registry.”
The Republican added, “If they continue moving forward on this path, we will have to pursue legislative actions to stop that from absolutely happening.”
There are, of course, plenty of relevant legislative details. Such measures would still have to clear the Senate, where Democrats’ odds are at least a little better. What’s more, there’d also be President Joe Biden’s veto pen to consider.
But the point is about priorities: Republicans haven’t yet control of anything, and they’re already exploring new ways to weaken gun laws at the federal level.