Can Congress Give Trump the 2A Win He Needs?

It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for the Trump administration when it comes to Second Amendment messaging, and there’s a real danger that the administration’s communications failure could lead to some gun owners staying home this November instead of voting. 

Actions speak louder than words, though, and a big 2A victory would do wonders to quell the criticism. If Congress can get a national right to carry reciprocity bill to Donald Trump’s desk, the president has previously indicated he would sign it into law. And now that the Senate is considering using the talking filibuster to force a vote on the SAVE Act, they could do the same for HR 38, the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.

Forcing a talking filibuster on reciprocity also makes political sense for the GOP.

You are at risk of losing Senate seats this year, possibly even the majority. To help prevent that, you should force Dem Senators and candidates in red and purple states to take a position on…

— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) February 3, 2026

First, the House needs to schedule a vote on HR 38. It’s been on the Union Calendar for several months, which means it could be brought to the floor at any time. If the House approves the legislation, the Senate could concur with just 51 votes by employing the talking filibuster. Yes, Democrats would put up a fight, and their filibuster could drag on for days. Eventually, though, the speeches will come to an end and a vote would be taken. 

Presuming HR 38 has enough support to pass both the House and Senate, Republicans could deliver a huge win to Second Amendment supporters and peaceable gun owners, who would soon be able to carry in every state of the union and the District of Columbia, so long as they can lawfully carry in their home state. 

The only wrinkle here is if HR 38 doesn’t have the votes to pass the House and Senate. At the moment, Congress.gov says HR 38 has 189 co-sponsors, along with Rep. Richard Hudson, the author of the bill. It takes 218 votes to pass the House, and at the moment there are only 218 Republicans, with two likely GOP seats vacant due to the resignation of Marjorie Taylor Greene and the death of California congressman Doug LaMalfa. Both of those former members of Congress are still listed as co-sponsors of HR 38, so the current tally appears to be 187 co-sponsors, not 189. 

The special election to replace Greene will take place on March 10, but the special election to replace LaMalfa won’t happen until August 4. Assuming a Republican wins election in GA-14 and is quickly sworn in, House Republicans could have a one-vote margin as early as next month. 

Will that be needed? Almost certainly yes, and even that might not be enough. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, has been endorsed by gun control groups like Giffords, and is not currently a co-sponsor of HR 38. I’d say he’s almost certain to vote against HR 38 if and when it comes to the floor. 

Rep. Brian Mast of Florida is another potential “no” vote. While Mast has sponsored some pro-2A bills, he’s not listed as a sponsor of HR 38. Mast also authored the “Mass Violence Prevention Reform Act” after the 2018 shootings in Parkland, Florida, which would have instituted a 60-day pause on the sale of all “gas-operated semiautomatic firearms with a rifled bore.” 

Fitzpatrick and Mast voting against HR 38 would be enough to doom the bill to defeat, and there are more than two dozen other Republican House members who’ve yet to sign on to the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act.

At this point, the Senate might actually be the better bet to pass national concealed carry reciprocity, at least if Senate Majority Leader John Thune would be willing to use the talking filibuster. With 53 Republican senators, 2A supporters have a little more wiggle room in the upper chamber. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski would be the most likely opponents of the bill, in my opinion, though both represent constitutional carry states., and Collins is up for re-election this year (although she has yet to officially announce her re-election bid). 

In theory, Moros’s plan is a good one, and if the GOP were to fall uniformly in line behind HR 38 they could give President Trump the Second Amendment legislative victory that would quiet much of the criticism the administration has received from gun rights advocates. Getting all 218 Republicans in the House to vote for HR 38, though, appears unachievable given Fitzpatrick’s embrace of gun control, and outside of Maine Rep. Jared Golden there aren’t really any House Democrats who might cross the aisle and vote in favor of national right to carry reciprocity. 

So, for the time being there’s not much Congress can do to give the president a 2A win. The odds will improve slightly if a Republican wins the GA-14 special election next month, but even that is no guarantee of HR 38’s passage. If the president wants to reinvigorate his support among gun owners, then, the action will have to come from the executive branch, not from his allies on Capitol Hill.