Donald Trump Jr. sat down for a stern lecture from a gun manufacturer in hopes of reassuring "Second Amendment people" that he and his dad love guns as much as they do.
The Republican presidential candidate's son and employee fired some guns and spoke to Joshua Waldren, the CEO of Utah-based SilencerCo, for a video interview posted on the NRA website.
"There is a divide, and it's almost like a 50-50 or one way or the other, and I think that's been what's unique about my father's candidacy, because all the people, when we started during the primaries, like, well, this person doesn't believe all 10,432 points of conservatism, he believes in 10,431," Trump said. "It's like, I don't know, that's pretty conservative."
Trump, who enjoys big game hunting, told the gun maker that firearms were obviously important to the Constitution's framers because they listed those weapons second, after the right to free speech.
"This wasn't an afterthought, years later, this was, I mean, the most basic aspect being the first, the second to protect that, and that can't be at risk," Trump said.
Trump then emphatically mischaracterized Clinton's thoughts on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller, which found that federal enclaves could not legally enforce prohibitions against individual gun ownership.
"She says the Supreme Court got that wrong," Trump said, overstating Clinton's argument that cities and states should be able to impose some limits on gun ownership. "That's scary to me as an American, because what's next? Legislation for the sake of legislation, just like government is bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy at this point, just more rules and more government in your in boardrooms, in your daily life, in your business, in your bedroom."
Trump partially choked on that last word, perhaps realizing that opposition to LGBT rights was not one of the 10,431 conservative points that were politically correct to overlook.
"We want to eliminate that, you know, we want to allow law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights and go after the people who are actually committing crimes," Trump said, briefly flashing the "nailed it" expression.
Trump assured the gun maker that his father understood how important the Supreme Court was to gun manufacturers and their NRA lobbyists, while attacking the rule of law by the time he reached end of his remarks.
"You lose the Supreme Court, you lose two or three justices, that's a 30- or 40-year swing, that's probably something you never recover from," Trump said. "It'd likely never come back, it'd be like Europe, where you have essentially a socialist state where everything is process-driven, bureaucratic, rules-based society where entrepreneurship and free thought are, you know, lacking."
He then bragged that he'd hunted in Europe, where he said noise suppressors are allowed as safety features despite being banned in parts of the U.S.
"If you had that kind of noise levels in any other industry as you would in shooting sports, OSHA would be all over the place, people would be going crazy," Trump said. "I mean, it's about safety, it's just another rule that government wants to put in place for no reason, because if Europe can do it, America better well be able to do it."
