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A pair of leading firearms trade associations will hold an annual import and export policy conference at Donald Trump’s hotel in Washington, D.C. next month—right as the administration finalizes a controversial change to federal gun-trading rules for which both groups have pressed.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Firearms & Ammunition Import/Export Roundtable will hold their annual Import/Export Conference at the Trump International Hotel beginning on July 30. The venue is a shift from Washington’s Grand Hyatt hotel, where the confab took place last year.
The conference is just the latest in a long line of trade-association events at Trump’s hotel, just blocks from the White House. From payday lenders to seasonal immigrant labor advocates to e-cigarette manufacturers, a wide swath of industries have patronized the Old Post Office, which last year earned Trump the second-most revenue of any of his hotels, resorts, and golf courses.
Good-government groups have argued since Trump took office that his refusal to divest from his portfolio of real-estate assets would encourage those seeking favor from the administration to patronize those properties.
NSSF, for its part, says its choice of hotel has nothing to do with any of its policy work. “We’ve had this conference in DC every year we’ve had it, this year it just happens to be at the Trump Hotel,” a spokesman said.
According to NSSF’s website, topics at past conferences have included “Export Control Reform” and the “USML-CCL transition plan.” That transition plan, on which NSSF’s lobbyists have also been working, involves a shift of authority over rules governing some firearms exports from the State Department to the Commerce Department.
The seemingly obscure change, which is close to being finalized, has drawn heated criticism from gun-control groups. A coalition of those groups warned last month that the shift “will thwart congressional oversight and create new and unacceptable risks of exacerbating gun violence, human-rights abuses, and armed conflict.”
Larry Keane, the NSSF’s top lobbyist, maintains that the change will “more efficiently [accomplish] the national-security and foreign-policy objectives of the controls” and “reduce unnecessary burdens for both the government and industry.”
