MorgueFile

ATLANTA – President Donald Trump vowed to protect gun rights and continued to wade further into the nationally watched congressional race playing out in the Atlanta suburbs during a Friday address to the National Rifle Association.

“The 8-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms has come to a crashing end,” he said to cheers inside the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, where the NRA is holding its annual meeting this year.

Trump, who was back in Georgia for the first time since the election, said he hasn’t forgotten the group’s support when few other prominent figures or organizations backed him. His appearance made him the first president since Ronald Reagan to address the group.

“You came through for me, and I am going to come through for you,” he told the estimated 10,000 people there to hear him speak Friday.

“To the NRA, I can proudly say I will never, ever let you down,” he said.

He also plugged Republican Karen Handel, who faces a Democrat, Jon Ossoff, who nearly won the special election outright. Trump also held a fundraiser for Handel while in Atlanta.

Trump’s stop in Georgia took place as a controversial campus carry bill sits on the desk of Gov. Nathan Deal, who vetoed a broader version of the proposal last year.

There’s no word yet whether Deal – who Trump touted Friday as a pro-Second Amendment governor – will sign a narrower version.

Trump’s visit to Atlanta fell on the eve of his 100th day in office, which caps a rocky start for the new administration. His visit prompted protests outside the conference center, including a “die-in” at a nearby park meant to illustrate the number of people who die every day of gun violence.

Trump found plenty of affirmation, though, at the NRA’s conference, where the group’s anti-Hillary Clinton commercials played repeatedly on large screens and speakers basked in Trump’s upset win over the Democrat.

“The NRA stood with Donald Trump through the darkest days of his campaign,” Wayne LaPierre, the association’s CEO, told conference-goers.

LaPierre heaped praise on Trump for tapping Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Other fights now await, including a push for a national reciprocity law that would allow concealed carry license holders in one state to legally carry in others.

Bob Jones, who lives in Bradenton, Fla., said he’s reminded how vastly different state laws are when he makes his annual summer trip up to Wisconsin.

“It’s ridiculous that I have to zigzag or get out of my car – to take guns out and dissemble them – to drive through Illinois,” Jones said while waiting for Trump to speak Friday.

“If I can take a driver’s license and go to every state, why can’t I take my concealed carry to every state?” he said. “It ought to be a national registration, a national permit.”

Chris Cox, the NRA’s chief lobbyist, said getting a national law passed will require the “same intensity and moral purpose that we brought to last year’s election.”

“I don’t care how long it takes, but we can and we will make Congress pass National Right to Care Reciprocity,” Cox said to applause.

But opponents pushback on the comparison of a concealed carry permit to a driver’s license.

John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, for one, said a comparison to a library card would be more fitting.

“To get a driver’s license, you have to take a driver ed course,” Feinblatt said on a call with media ahead of the NRA conference. “You have to show that you can pass a driving test. You actually have to get a vision exam. And you have to renew your license, and your license can get points. It can be suspended. It can be revoked.”

Jill Nolin covers the Georgia Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach her at jnolin@cnhi.com.