Eight years later, gun rights in America appear not only to have survived the Obama administration but to have thrived. Gun sales broke records almost every year of the past eight. As president, Obama signed legislation allowing guns onto Amtrak trains and into national parks, where they were previously prohibited, and his executive orders after the Sandy Hook massacre had no perceptible effect on most gun owners. Then we elected Donald Trump — a long-shot candidate who earned an endorsement from the National Rifle Association before he had even consolidated the support of his own political party. In April, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president since Ronald Reagan to address the NRA's annual meeting. He told the cheering crowd that he was their "true friend and champion in the White House" and proclaimed that "the eight-year assault on your Second Amendment freedoms" was over.