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Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump plans to meet with the National Rifle Association to discuss stopping gun sales to people on the terror watch list or no-fly list, he said Wednesday.
Trump noted the NRA’s endorsement of his candidacy last month when he announced the meeting in a tweet:
Trump’s tweet followed the deadliest mass shooting in American history, in which a gunman killed 49 and injured 53 at an Orlando gay nightclub Sunday. Trump addressed the shooting in a speech Monday, in which he blamed the attack on a vulnerable immigration system instead of gun policies.
The NRA said in a statement Wednesday afternoon that they would be “happy to meet with Donald Trump” but that their position has not changed.
“The NRA believes that terrorists should not be allowed to purchase or possess firearms, period,” Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. “Anyone on a terror watchlist who tries to buy a gun should be thoroughly investigated by the FBI and the sale delayed while the investigation is ongoing. If an investigation uncovers evidence of terrorist activity or involvement, the government should be allowed to immediately go to court, block the sale, and arrest the terrorist.”
“Due process protections should be put in place that allow law-abiding Americans who are wrongly put on a watchlist to be removed,” Cox added. “That has been the position of Sen. John Cornyn (R.-Tex.) and a majority of the U.S. Senate.”
Just the day before, the NRA had tweeted that “restrictions like bans on gun purchases by people on ‘watch lists’ are ineffective, unconstitutional, or both.”
Trump said last November he supported stopping gun sales to anyone who is on the watch list or “an enemy of the state” in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulous, Politico reported.
Trump’s campaign platform on his website has said he opposes any type of ban on guns or expansion of background checks, though he wrote in a book published in 2000 that he then supported a ban on assault weapons and longer waiting periods for gun sales.