Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has filmed a personalized video for NRA members confirming their “God-given rights” to bear arms as Donald Trump’s war with Iran intensifies.
Hegseth, 45, recorded a bespoke message for the annual meeting of the National Rifle Association which was held in Houston between April 16 and 19, which the group shared online.
The religiously-charged four-and-a-half minute video sees Hegseth use the occasion of America’s 250th anniversary to “renew our commitment” to the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The NRA’s annual meeting also tapped into the forthcoming anniversary.
The former Fox News host has already thrown his support behind the NRA this month. He signed a memorandum that allowed uniformed service members to carry their own privately owned firearms on Department of Defense property.
“Our military installations have been turned into gun-free zones – leaving our service members vulnerable and exposed,“ Hegseth posted on X on April 2. “That ends today.”
The NRA threw their weight behind the memorandum stating “the contrast between President Trump and his recent Democrat predecessors on Second Amendment issues could hardly be more pronounced.”
In the new video, Hegseth said the rights to bear arms are “endowed by Almighty God” and lashed out at “both foreign and domestic” threats on this “God-given right.”
“We’ve seen anti-American policies pushed from city councils to state legislatures to the highest echelons of the federal government, chipping away at the fundamental and constitutional freedoms our nation was founded upon,” Hegseth said.
While he did not name former President Joe Biden, Hegseth stated incredulously that, “just a few short years ago, we even had a sitting president stand before Congress, and demand the disarmament of law abiding Americans citizens.”
Biden, who had been outspoken about gun rights even as a vice president, signed a landmark gun control bill in June 2022, a month after shootings in New York and Texas that killed 31 people. It imposed tougher checks on young people buying firearms and encouraged states to remove guns from people deemed a threat. The NRA opposed the bill.
Hegseth assured NRA members that gun reform was not on the agenda. “I’ll make this one easy and clear. Not under this administration and not from this war department. Those dark days are over.”
He then proudly raised his recent memorandum to allow military members to carry and store private weapons on military installations.
Concerns over private firearms held by military officials was highlighted by a Department of Defense-funded report in 2022 on preventing suicide in the U.S. military. The NRA saw it as undermining service members’ Second Amendment rights.
Hegseth’s message to “every gun-owning patriot” saw him state, “Let us call upon every American to fearlessly protect the wise truths our forefathers enshrined in the Constitution, and never apologize for the values you hold dear and never surrender your God given rights, which I know this group never will.”
Hegseth’s video for the NRA’s annual meeting came as President Trump skipped attending the event for the second year in a row.
He had previously attended every convention held by the powerful group since 2015, with critics now claiming the NRA have a declining influence in Republican politics.
“The president is obviously incredibly busy with worldwide affairs right now, and we’re incredibly close to the administration. We work hand-in-glove with them on all kinds of two-way issues,” NRA Director of Public Affairs Justin Davis said last week, labelling Trump an “incredible ally” of the organization.
The deeply-religious Hegseth was embarrassed last week when he recited a prayer at a worship service at the Pentagon that he said was delivered to him by the lead mission planner of the rescue operation for two Air Force crew members shot down in Iran.
The passage was a prayer largely invented by Quentin Tarantino for the movie Pulp Fiction and delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character.
Trump’s war with Iran is now entering its eighth week. So far, 13 U.S. service members have been killed in conflict and at least 399 injured.
