Donald Trump is courting gun supporters on Saturday at the annual meeting of their influential lobby in Dallas, in the state of Texas, in the midst of a virulent return to the campaign, between insults against Joe Biden and false theory according to which the 2020 election would have been stolen from him.
Between two hearings at his criminal trial in New York, the former President of the United States and Republican candidate took advantage of the weekend to campaign in front of the most fervent supporters of the right to own firearms, enshrined in the 2e amendment to the American Constitution.
He is scheduled to speak this afternoon at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual leadership forum.
Speaking at a donor dinner in Minnesota on Friday, he reaffirmed his never-proven theory that the 2020 presidential election, won by rival Joe Biden, was rigged. He said he was particularly convinced that he had won the vote in the state of Minnesota, in 2016 and 2020, while it was the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, then Joe Biden, who had won.
Then he launched virulent and sometimes insulting invectives against Joe Biden, described among other things as a “horrible human being”.
“My opponent is not a good loser. But he’s a loser,” replied the American president, campaigning in a restaurant in Atlanta, in the state of Georgia.
The 77-year-old Republican billionaire has a close relationship with the NRA, which paid him tens of millions of dollars for his victorious campaign in 2016.
He has already promised that if he returned to power, he would unravel the regulatory measures put in place during his mandate by current President Joe Biden, and which are considered timid by supporters of stricter control .
Troubled context
While Joe Biden promises to act to ban semi-automatic rifles, used in the deadliest killings, Donald Trump promises the status quo and wants to be the candidate of gun owners. “The Democrats want to take their guns, and they will take them,” he assured Friday in Minnesota.
“President Biden and I will continue to take on the gun lobby to keep Americans safe, while Donald Trump will continue to sacrifice the safety of our children and our communities to satisfy his special interests,” he replied. Vice President Kamala Harris, in a statement Saturday.
Joe Biden is going to Georgia, which he narrowly won in 2020, in particular to campaign with African-American voters, crucial in his victory in 2020. He is speaking on Sunday to students at Morehouse College, a famous university in the black American community, where civil rights hero Martin Luther King studied.
Donald Trump speaks before the NRA in a troubled context for the association. It lost its emblematic president Wayne LaPierre, who resigned in January before his civil trial in New York, where he was found guilty by a jury of corruption and mismanagement, with financial compensation of more than $4.3 million to the key.
The United States has more individual firearms in circulation than people, a proliferation which results in a very high rate of firearm deaths in the United States, incomparable to that of other developed countries.
Around 49,000 people died by gunfire in 2021, compared to 45,000 in 2020, already a record year, or more than 130 deaths per day, more than half of them by suicide.