MILWAUKEE (NewsNation) — Three days after former President Donald Trump was shot by a gunman at a Pennsylvania campaign rally, a panel of lawmakers preached the importance of protecting the rights of American gun owners heading into November’s general election at an event sponsored by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association as part of the Republican National Convention.
Republican U.S. Reps. Kat Cammack of Florida, Wesley Hunt of Texas and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin participated in the panel Tuesday on the role of safety and self-defense. Trump senior adviser Chris LaCivita also attended.
LaCivita told delegates in attendance at the Pfister Hotel that the former president was “doing great” and referred to him as a fighter, saying the attempted assassination was an event that affects everyone differently.
For Hunt, a former military pilot who said Tuesday he had been shot multiple times while flying 55 combat missions in the Middle East, the attempt on the former president’s life stressed the need for guns to be in the hands of the right people.
“There are 400 million guns currently in circulation. Guns aren’t going anywhere,” Hunt said. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. And that son of a b—- (accused Trump shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks) is now dead because a good guy with a gun shot him.”
He added, “The insinuation we’re just going to eradicate this country of guns is a ridiculous one. So you better arm yourself accordingly and make sure you have the ability to respond when an incident like that happens because there’s bad people out there who want to see all Americans dead.”
Hunt said while a volunteer firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was killed in the shooting, snipers spared countless other lives by acting immediately. Cammack called the attack an “absolute, catastrophic failure” on the part of the FBI and U.S. Secret Service.
She said that in the coming weeks, FBI agents and the Secret Service will be required to account for the “multiple failures” that occurred.
On Thursday, Republicans will make Trump their official nominee. LaCivita said the former president will deliver a speech recounting what he accomplished during his four years in the White House and looking ahead to how he “will do it again.” The lawmakers on the panel agree that one of Trump’s priorities should be protecting Second Amendment rights.
Cammack said she looks forward to a time when Republicans have an expanded majority in the House, control of the Senate and Trump back in the White House.
However, with more than 10 million hunters and gun owners not registered to vote, the priority must be getting those who can legally carry weapons to register and to the polls before attention shifts to what Congress will do regarding firearms legislation, Cammack said.
Meanwhile, Fitzgerald said he does not expect the U.S. Supreme Court to issue one huge sweeping ruling regarding firearms. The court, which recently reversed a federal ban on bump stocks enacted during the Trump administration, will instead impact gun rights in “small bites.”
He said he has seen the same with other legislation that has passed through Congress, which he says puts the onus on lawmakers.
“We have to be diligent as legislators to protect the Second Amendment to say, ‘Wait a minute — this is a constitutional guaranteed right,’” Fitzgerald said.
Cammack agreed, citing the bump stock ruling was overturned and a recent court decision in Texas that went against the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which can no longer go after National Rifle Association members over guns with pistol braces attached.
The Florida congresswoman expects to see more movement to protect gun owners. She said the phrase in the Second Amendment that said the right of people to bear arms “shall not be infringed” is an absolute right and not something that should be in question.
“The Constitution is not a la carte,” she said. “You don’t get to pick and choose what you uphold from one day to the next.”
She said that federal agencies should not be “judge and jury” when it comes to firearms regulations, making it vital that firearms legislation be left to Congress and the courts rather than organizations like the ATF to determine what is legal and what is not.
Hunt took it a step further, saying Democrats on the Left are using the AR-15 as a scapegoat to infringe on the rights of gun owners.
“What they’re going to try to do is demonize the AR-15 to make it seem like everybody is a crazed mass shooter even though that’s completely false,” he said. “So my message (to voters) is to be vigilant. They cannot go after our pistol braces, they cannot go after our bump stocks, and they cannot go after our AR-15s.
“The second we allow them to infringe on that, we’re letting the fox in the henhouse.”