WATCH: Trump Pledges to Protect Gun Rights in Fiery Speech: 'No One Will Lay a Finger on Your Firearms'

Former President Donald Trump returned to Pennsylvania on Friday, using his first 2024 campaign appearance in the critical swing state to tout his support for Second Amendment rights — and to slam Joe Biden and other gun grabbers who continue to push for tougher gun legislation.

Speaking before a fired-up crowd of National Rifle Association (NRA) members, Trump pledged that "no one will lay a finger on your firearms" if he returns to the White House, adding that when he was in office he "did nothing" to curb gun rights. In an address at the NRA’s "Great American Outdoor Show" in Harrisburg, Trump said:

During my four years, nothing happened. And there was great pressure on me having to do with guns. We did nothing.
Now I stand before you with a very simple promise ... Your Second Amendment will always be safe with me as your president. When I'm back in the Oval Office no one will lay a finger on your firearms. It's not going to happen.

The former president claimed, with good reason, that a second Biden term would mean “hundreds of radical left judges waging war against gun owners [and to] confiscate your guns and violate your right to self-defense."

If Joe Biden is re-elected, your gun rights will be gone. The sad thing is the bad guys aren’t giving up their guns. Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my first week in office, perhaps my first day.

While a blanket claim that "your gun rights will be gone" is a bit over the top, Trump was right concerning the Democrats' never-ending efforts to ban "assault rifles" and "weapons of war" (neither of which are legally available to private citizens), which translates into a war against the dreaded AR-15 and similar semi-automatic firearms.

Incidentally, as I reported on February 5, a new study has blown a gaping hole in the gun grabbers' so-called "mass shootings" myth.

Trump blasted Biden "and his thugs" for what he said they've done to the country over the last three years.

Even as they turn America into a crime-ridden, gang-infested, terror-filled dumping ground, Joe Biden and his thugs will do everything in their power to confiscate your guns and annihilate your God-given right to self-defense.

The former president painted a bleak picture of where the country is headed if Biden wins in November.

It means hundreds of more radical left judges waging a crusade against law-abiding gun owners, and four more years of Joe Biden means a nonstop war on gun makers, dealers, and sellers designed to put the entire industry right out of business.

Again, a tad hyperbolic — but there's little doubt that Biden and the Democrats would come as close to Trump's prediction as they could get away with.

To be fair, as my colleague Streiff reported in January 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) rule outlawing so-called bump stocks, which in 2018, then-President Trump strongly supported banning.

Anyway, Trump's support in Pennsylvania has "slightly waned" in recent polls, but he still holds a commanding lead. Longtime Harrisburg-based Republican consultant Christopher Nicholas said that the NRA gun show was "a good place for him to be today."

Pennsylvania has more per capita members of the NRA than any other state in the country. There are large swaths of the state where that issue doesn’t help you and there are large swaths where it definitely does. And there’s a stark contrast between he [sic] and President Biden on this issue.

A stark difference indeed. Moreover, Trump's reiteration of his strong stance on the Second Amendment and the rights of law-abiding gun owners couldn't come at a better time, as crime rages and the left continues its gun-grabbing assault.