Here's what the NRA did to change Trump's mind on gun control

Less than two weeks ago, President Donald Trump shocked Republicans and Democrats by publicly embracing gun control measures and mocking members of congress for being scared of the National Rifle Association.

“They have great power over you people. They have less power over me,” Trump said on Feb. 28 at a roundtable with lawmakers where he endorsed raising the age to purchase all guns to 21, seizing guns from those suspected to be dangerous before a hearing, and the universal background checks in the Manchin-Toomey bill that Barack Obama attempted to pass in 2013.

But when the Trump administration rolled out its official gun proposals on Sunday Mar. 11 in response to the school shooting last month in Parkland, Florida, those gun control measures endorsed just twelve days before were gone.

Read: Trump just called out Republicans for being "petrified" of the NRA

Instead, the Trump administration only endorsed proposals that the NRA supports.

Those include the STOP School Violence Act which authorizes $50 million in state-based grants every year to provide firearms training to teachers and administrators plus enhance school security. The Republican-controlled House is expected to vote and pass that bill as early as Wednesday.

The Trump administration also endorsed the Fix NICS Act which is designed to improve compliance with the nation’s already existing background check system which is poorly enforced.

As for things like background checks and raising the age minimum to purchase a gun, the Trump administration announced the formation of a commission to study those issues with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos in charge. "We have to go back to the beginning and talk about how these violent acts are even occurring to start with," explained DeVos on NBC’s Today Show Monday morning, suggesting that the timeline for the commission would be quite long.

Trump’s abrupt reversal on gun control caught some allies off-guard. “Nobody gave us a heads up,” said Jonathan Kott, a spokesman for Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who co-wrote the Manchin-Toomey bill. Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania was also not kept in the loop. “Our office was not privy to the proposal before it went out,” spokesman Steve Kelly told VICE News.

Read: Trump didn't mention "guns" once in a speech to the nation about a school shooting

But the president’s shift was not an accident but the product of a personal lobbying campaign by the NRA and gun rights activists who also make up a large segment of Trump’s most loyal supporters.

“The President has shown, time and time again, that he is willing to listen to his base. That certainly includes the more then 5 million members of the NRA,” Grant Stinchfield, a host of NRA TV, told VICE News.

Stinchfield emphasized that he doesn’t speak for the NRA but he believes that “[w]hat Americans love about President Trump is that he is willing to change what may be a well intentioned idea after he realizes it is unconstitutional. He listens and reassesses, that is the sign of a leader.”

And Trump did listen to his base.

Three days after Trump’s roundtable with lawmakers, the executive director of the NRA’s political arm, Chris Cox, was able to arrange an Oval Office meeting with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Afterward, Cox tweeted that the administration did not support gun control.

Three minutes later, Trump also tweeted about the meeting.

Then on Thursday Mar. 8, Trump and his wife Melania met in the Oval Office with Kyle Kashuv, a survivor of the Parkland shooting who has been meeting with members of Congress and calling on them to emphasize school safety rather than gun control with legislation like the STOP School Violence Act.

Kashuv recently became a popular voice on the right as a counter to the Parkland students who are calling for more gun control and have been embraced by the left. Kashuv has been a frequent guest on Fox News and is retweeted frequently by Donald Trump Jr., which Kashuv speculates may have been how he ended up meeting the president after being invited to join Melania at the White House.

“FLOTUS told me ‘I am going to walk you out’ and somehow I walk into the Oval,” Kashuv told VICE News through Twitter direct messaging. “I thought it was just a tour of the Oval. A minute later POTUS walks in and eagerly says ‘where is Kyle?’”

Kashuv said he wouldn’t discuss the details of the meeting except that “I do know he was proud of me.”

He added that “I think FLOTUS and I now have a special connection. She is so motherly.”

Cover image: President Donald Trump speaks to the media as he departs from the White House on March 10, 2018 in Washington, DC. Trump left to attend a rally in western Pennsylvania. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images)