Milwaukee — A top Trump campaign official is pledging that a new Trump administration would stock the federal courts with pro-gun judges and fight for policies to allow “citizens the ability to carry their firearms and protect themselves.” The remarks were made by Chris LaCivita, one of the top honchos of the Trump 2024 campaign.
The gun event at the Republican National Convention where LaCivita spoke was not sponsored by the beleaguered National Rifle Association. Rather, it was put on by a Wisconsin-based, rising giant in the firearms world, the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, or USCCA, which claims 850,000 members and also operates a dark money “action fund” that seeks to influence federal and state-level gun policy.
The USCCA may not yet be a household name, but it doesn’t lack clout. At the convention, it is not only sponsoring a booth with an AR-15 giveaway, just days after Trump was shot with one. It also had the sway to bring a top Trump campaign architect — senior adviser LaCivita — and several pro-gun Congress members into a dialogue about expanding gun access as the convention celebrated its “Make America Safe Again” theme Wednesday.
Ironically, for an event sponsored by a concealed-carry group, the event was firearm free. The meeting was hosted at the glitzy Pfister hotel, where many MAGA VIPs are staying. The hotel was crawling with federal agents, and included an airport-like screening at the entrance, where a Secret Service member was shouting out, “No Guns!”
Hosting a gun event so soon after the assassination attempt on Trump was awkward business. The meeting began with a moment of silence for the victims who were killed and injured in Pennsylvania. But it quickly pivoted to red-meat issues for the second amendment advocates in the crowd.
The leader of government affairs for USCCA is Katie Pointer Baney, who is also the executive director of USCCA’s politics arm. “We just saw one of the most protected men in the world almost killed by a deranged, evil individual,” Pointer Baney said to LaCivita. “What’s the campaign’s message to Americans today about ensuring we maintain the right to protect ourselves?”
LaCivita responded: “I’m personally a very big supporter of the Second Amendment, as is President Trump.” The burly former Marine elaborated on his own heat-packing practices: “If I’m not traveling with the boss, I carry concealed. That’s just what I do.” LaCivita described his hobbies as hunting and unwinding at the range — “It’s very therapeutic for me.”
The Trump campaign official said he was focused on turning gun-rights activists out to the polls. “The world is controlled by those who show up,” he said. “And if you don’t vote, in my world, you don’t matter.”
The Second Amendment is “on the ballot” in 2024, LaCivita said, primarily because of the next president’s ability to shape the courts through the appointment of, in Trump’s case, pro-gun judges. “That’s what we can do to have the biggest impact,” he said. “This is what scares the hell out of Democrats and the left.” There is reason to be wary: Trump appointed three justices with an expansive view of the second amendment to the Supreme Court, who were endorsed and promoted by the gun lobby. Those justices have already issued one ruling that invalidated many state laws restricting handguns, and another that reversed a Trump-era ban on bump stocks — which turn semiautomatic assault rifles into the functional equivalent of machine guns.
Trump’s focus “from issue standpoint,” LaCivita said, is expanding the rights of citizens to carry guns in public. Pointer Baney and LaCivita commiserated about the pain points of carrying a concealed gun. A primary legislative focus for USCCA is pushing “reciprocity” so that concealed-carry gun owners can travel freely among states with their guns, despite varying state regulations and eligibility requirements. LaCivita bemoaned how “restrictive” it is to go in and out of airports. “The one thing I don’t want to do is put my backpack through the TSA machine and then read about it the next day in the newspaper.”
LaCivita contrasted Trump’s approach on guns to what he characterized as the Biden administration’s “extreme, anti-firearm” policies. Despite the shot taken at his candidate, LaCivita insisted that gun violence should be addressed by working to “curb problem individuals” — rather than “trying to ban what’s clearly been defined by the Constitution as a right.”
In the second half of the USCCA event, Pointer Barney hosted GOP members of Congress in a panel discussion. Wesley Hunt, a fiery freshman legislator from Texas, argued that the notion of gun control is dead — so Americans better get with the program and buy a firearm instead. “The insinuation that we’re going to just eradicate this country of guns is a ridiculous one. So you better arm yourself accordingly and make sure that you can that you have the ability to respond,” Hunt insisted.
Hunt is not your typical Republican. He’s Black Iraq War vet, and he strayed from the unity themes the MAGA convention has been attempting to foreground in Milwaukee. Hunt encouraged anyone who believes differently about easy access to guns to “have your head examined.” And he warned about a threat from within: “We have fellow countrymen,” he said, “that want to see Americans dead.”
A second lawmaker on stage, Kat Cammack of Florida, used the language of anti-government extremists to celebrate recent setbacks at the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, or the ATF, which implements federal gun policy. Cammack blasted “nameless, faceless bureaucrats in a basement” for having imposed restrictions on gun owners — referring to the agency as “ground zero” for Democrats’ “weaponized” political agenda.
Cammack celebrated the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn the ban on bump stocks. The fact that the original restriction had been put in place by the Trump ATF seemed to get lost in the shuffle.
Hunt piled on, insisting: “They cannot go after our bump stocks. Because the second we allow them to infringe on that, we are letting the fox in the hen house.” He then defended the AR-15 — the weapon that was used to try to kill Trump — insisting the left is trying to “demonize the AR-15 to make it seem like everybody is a crazed mass shooter.”
Unfolding outside of the spotlight of the main convention stage, the event nonetheless served to underscore that the MAGA GOP remains committed to an extreme agenda on firearms, even as they try to paint their position as “common sense.”
After the event, Pointer Barney explained USCCA’s role at the RNC to Rolling Stone: “We wanted to partner with the host committee to help execute really a safe and successful convention,” she said. “So we’re on the ground all week, talking to folks about situational awareness, personal responsibility, and how to stay safe, while they’re in town. That’s our focus.”
Donald Trump speaks in front of the American flag at the White House, on May 12, 2026.
It’s the Corruption, Stupid
Let’s say it plainly: There has never been a president as corrupt as Donald Trump. There is no close second in our history.
Take two days in May as Exhibit A. Americans just found out that in the first quarter of this year, Trump’s stock portfolio made 3,600 trades — an average of nearly 60 a day. This is a rapacious pace that would make a day trader on meth blush. Many of these appear suspiciously timed to benefit from actions approved by the president himself. For example, his Nvidia stock surged after Trump announced the company would be permitted to sell its cutting-edge AI chips to China. Similar suspiciously well-timed calls were made ahead of big government moves involving other companies, from Intel to Palantir to Boeing. The Trump Organization says all trades are made by a third-party investment advisor. If so, they appear to be psychic.
But the apparent insider trading scam being run from within the Oval Office is small change — merely millions of dollars — compared to the self-dealing plunder of $1.8 billion tax-payer dollars being pushed through the DOJ and IRS.
There’s never been a sitting president who sued his own government for $10 billion. That’s because it’s absurdly corrupt. But that’s what Donald Trump did, arguing he had suffered damages from prosecutions pursued before he was reelected. Trump, like many of his supporters, persistently confuses persecution with prosecution.
The judge who heard the case convened an independent panel to review the suit, suspecting it might be a scam. Before the case could be dismissed, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche — who had previously served as Trump’s personal lawyer — declared that the bogus suit would be preemptively settled, not for $10 billion, but for the symbolic sum of $1.776 billion, which Trump said will be distributed to persecuted political allies.
This is a shakedown. The president is compelling a Justice Department he controls to redirect money from taxpayers — that’s you — to his most fervent supporters. This slush fund will set off a cash grab among MAGA lawyers and be used to reward partisan fanatics who attacked the U.S. Capitol — and police officers — on his behalf.
If that wasn’t enough of a blatantly illegal use of presidential power, it was revealed that the “settlement” deal included a pledge signed by the acting attorney general that would ensure — in the hysterical all caps of a Trump tweet — that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” any tax claims, audits or related prosecutions against Trump, his family or their businesses. This is an attempt to get a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card for the Trump family — a license to steal.
All of this is insane. All of it is unethical, and much of it is illegal and impeachable — but our system was not designed to deal with a shamelessly self-dealing president, a spineless Republican Congress, and a complaint conservative Supreme Court that has refused to enforce the emoluments clause of the Constitution and ruled that Trump has immunity for actions he takes as president. That ruling may prove to be the most consequential — and most corrosive — act of judicial abdication in American history. Against this partisan-group think, individual acts of courage matter. So kudos to the top lawyer at the Treasury Department, Brian Morrissey, who at least had the integrity to resign rather than oversee this tax-payer funded plunder.
Just to close out the corruption-palooza, Trump announced that he would endorse the Lone Star State poster-boy of corruption, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in his primary against incumbent GOP Senator John Cornyn. Paxton’s scandals include a truly buffoonish array of fraud and bribery charges that resulted in him nearly being impeached by the state legislature. But corruption is a feature, not a bug, of Trumpland.All this smacks of late Rome and you’d be forgiven for half expecting Trump will next appoint a horse to an open Cabinet position, with Republicans rationalizing the need for more equine representation. It is no more absurd that the cavalcade of Trump appointees refusing to say that Biden won the 2020 election during their confirmation hearings in the Senate. The decision to parrot unreality for partisan gain defines deviancy down.
But in the search for something hopeful to hold onto in dark times, you can find some comfort in the fact that corruption is often the thing that turns the tide against authoritarian-adjacent administrations. And there is evidence this is happening.
Trump’s billions in self-enrichment, his reflexive twisting of U.S. policy to sell out long-term national interests and enduring values, comes at a moment when nearly half of Americans say they are feeling extremely anxious about their own financial situation.
That anxiety is driven by the widening gap between Main Street and Wall Street, a gap set on fire by a trade war and a real war Trump started, which has no end in sight but promises to further raise energy prices, fertilizer prices, and strangle the global economy. While CEOs embrace the transactional nature of this president, kissing his ring and offering vigs, the situation is grim if you’re not lining up at the Trump trough. At a time when the super-rich are getting richer, everyone else is told to go to hell by the man in the White House.
These are precisely the kinds of conditions that turn people against an aging, autocratic president who shows contempt for the very people who put him in office. It is not just that Trump’s approval numbers have plummeted to the point where two-thirds of Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. It is that Trump, for the first time, is opposed by a majority of non-college-educated white voters — a.k.a. his base — and they feel betrayed because Trump is raking in billions of dollars while they struggle to pay rent and buy groceries. Trump has dismissed and discounted their concerns, turning a blind eye to the anger about rising costs that carried him back into the presidency.
Trump’s aim is to make his thievery so blatant that we collectively become numb to it and disfigure our democracy in the process. Once upon a time conservatives warned about the dangers of “crony capitalism” and corruption. Now they are silent and complicit. It is the temporary triumph of partisanship over principle. Patriotism demands that we reassert the basic American idea that no man is above the law and that our presidents are not kings.