Trump hasn't thought things through. He doesn't have politics or principles, but he does have a gut feel for what makes sense. He is an authoritarian statist.
Which makes him a kind of moderate.
Trump gives another iteration of Trump-ism and it is worth a reader's time to take 30 seconds and watch it: Click here: ABC News clip
I don't think Trump is calculating anything here. He isn't making a principled shift from the NRA stance to a moderate-middle in a careful strategy to pick up suburban soccer mom votes. That may in fact happen but that is not his calculation. What I think is revealed here is that Donald Trump has simply not thought very deeply or carefully about gun control, the first amendment, the second amendment, or the fourth amendment. He hasn't thought about public policy and its constraints and implications. He thinks about goals and intentions, and stops there.
Donald Trump Open to Gun Law Change, But Says Armed Clubgoers Could Have Stopped Orlando Gunman
Gun control supporters understand that restricting guns has enormous implications and difficulties. How does government identify mental illness? How does government respect freedom of speech simultaneously with taking coercive action if a citizen says he may sometime act with violence possibly? How does government distinguish between a citizen who hunts deer from one who hunts Christians? How does government distinguish between self defense and shooting up a church? Or a mosque? Or a Planned Parenthood clinic? Gun control opponents understand these same implications.
Trump just assured the NRA that he was a big supporter of theirs and he got their official endorsement. But then he said, apparently off the cuff, that he wanted to ban even people with an inclination to terrorism from getting guns, a position far more aggressive and confiscatory than anything Hillary Clinton has dared to suggest.
Trump hasn't thought this through in the least. He just knows that he is OK with good people having guns and terrorists not getting them, so that is what he asserts. It is as simple as that, and simplicity is exactly what he wants.
It is an enormous weakness for Trump if the professional pundit and political and media people actually care about principles and policies, but it is possible that none of it really matters to them. The Republicans trust Trump and will settle for him. Democrats will support Hillary. Most regular voter citizens haven't thought all that hard about it themselves, just like Trump. They are citizens, not constitutional lawyers doing briefs for the Supreme Court on issues of prior restraint and the definition of "the people" or "bearing" or "arms." They just want what Trump wants: good people to have guns and scary people not to have them.
It would be chaotic government but it may not be bad campaigning.
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