Updated on June 15 at 1:07 p.m. ET
Donald Trump’s powers of personal persuasion are about to face their biggest test yet.
The presumptive Republican nominee tweeted Wednesday that he would be meeting with the NRA to discuss proposals to bar people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns.
I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 15, 2016
Support for tighter gun restrictions for suspected terrorists puts Trump at odds with Republicans and in line with Democrats, who have renewed their push for closing what they call the “terror loophole” in the days after a man who had been under investigation by the FBI murdered 49 people in an Orlando nightclub. But it’s not a new position for Trump. “If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it's an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely,” he said on ABC’s This Week in December, around the time when Democrats made their last effort to change the law.
The NRA and most Republicans have opposed linking the terror watch list, or the smaller “no-fly” list, to gun restrictions as both an infringement on Second Amendment rights and on due process, since many of the people on the list have never been convicted or even accused of a crime. The ACLU has also criticized the proposal as a violation of civil liberties. “The standards for inclusion on the No Fly List are unconstitutionally vague, and innocent people are blacklisted without a fair process to correct government error,” Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, wrote in December. But that may not bother Trump, who’s floated any number of proposals in the name of combatting terror that would constrict civil rights.