Guns are shown at Caso’s Gun-A-Rama in Jersey City, New Jersey, which has been open since 1967. (Photo by Aristide Economopoulos/NJ Monitor)
This is one in a series of States Newsroom reports on the major policy issues in the presidential race.
WASHINGTON — A mass shooting at a Georgia high school in September thrust the issue of gun violence to the forefront of the presidential race.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump agree that gun violence is a major problem, but they offer strikingly different views on how to address it.
Two 14-year-old students and two math teachers were killed at Apalachee High School.
While at a campaign rally in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, shortly after the Apalachee shooting, Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, renewed calls for an assault weapons ban, universal background checks and red flag laws.
Students should not have to be frightened of school shootings, she said. “They are sitting in a classroom where they should be fulfilling their God-given potential, yet some part of their big, beautiful minds is worried about a shooter breaking through the door,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be this way.”
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, expressed his condolences.
“Our hearts are with the victims and loved ones of those affected by the tragic event in Winder, GA,” Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social. “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.”
Trump has survived two assassination attempts, one where he was injured in the ear, but has not changed his stance on guns.
After the first assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita said at the Republican National Convention that the party won’t back away from its support of Second Amendment rights.
During a Univision town hall with undecided Latino voters that aired Wednesday night, an audience member asked Trump how he would explain his gun policy to “parents of the victims of school shootings.”
“We have a Second Amendment and a right to bear arms,” Trump said. “I’m very strongly an advocate of that. I think that if you ever tried to get rid of it, you wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t be able to take away the guns, because people need that for security, they need it for entertainment and for sport, and other things. But they also, in many cases, need it for protection.”
A majority of Americans view gun violence as a problem — about 60% — and they expect it to only get worse over the next five years, according to a Pew Research Center study.
This year there have been 421 mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks gun violence in the U.S.
For a third year in a row, in 2022 — the most recent year of finalized data — firearms were the leading cause of death for children and teens ages 1 to 17, according to a report from the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions.
Harris’ record
In the aftermath of two mass shootings in 2022, Congress passed the most comprehensive bipartisan gun safety legislation in decades.
In Uvalde, Texas, 19 children and two teachers were murdered, making it the second-deadliest mass shooting since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in 2012. In Buffalo, a white supremacist targeted a Black neighborhood and killed 10 Black people in a grocery store.
The package that Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law provided $11 billion in mental health funds and $750 million for states to enact red flag laws. It also closed loopholes and established a White House Office for Gun Violence Prevention, among other provisions.
Red flag laws allow courts to temporarily remove a firearm from an individual who is a threat to themselves or others, among other provisions.
Biden tasked Harris with leading the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which helps local communities implement that 2022 bipartisan gun legislation and aids communities impacted by gun violence.
Trump’s record
During Trump’s first presidency, he had a mixed record on gun policy.
After a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, the Trump administration moved to ban bump stocks, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to quickly fire bullets.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court, to which Trump appointed three conservative justices, struck down the ban on bump stocks.
Trump also threatened to veto legislation from Congress that would have enhanced background checks on guns.
Promise: A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines
Democrats have long called for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, which are typically used in mass shootings.
The U.S. used to have a ban on assault weapons, but it expired in 2004 and Congress failed to renew the ban.
“I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban,” Harris said at the White House in late September.
Fulfilling this promise would come down to the makeup in Congress and overcoming the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to advance legislation.
Promise: A rollback of Biden regulations
During a forum with the National Rifle Association in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in February, Trump promised to roll back all gun-related regulations that the Biden administration has implemented.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated on my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said.
Trump specifically said he would cancel the Biden administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy, which revokes federal licenses from gun dealers who violate firearm laws.
Brian Hughes, a Trump campaign senior adviser, said in a statement to States Newsroom that if Trump wins a second term, “he will terminate every single one of the Harris-Biden’s attacks on law-abiding gun owners his first week in office and stand up for our constitutionally enshrined right to bear arms.”
Promise: Tax credits, no gun-free zones
During an NRA event in April 2023, Trump said that he was supportive of a tax credit for teachers who wanted to carry a firearm in schools.
Trump has also previously voiced his disapproval of schools being gun-free zones. Days after the Uvalde school shooting, Trump attended another NRA event in Houston, Texas, where he argued that a gun-free zone does not allow people to protect themselves.
“As the age-old saying goes, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” Trump said. “The existence of evil is one of the very best reasons to arm law-abiding citizens.”
He argued that schools should have metal detectors, fencing and an armed police officer.