There’s a lot of paranoia here. Trump is seeking approval to campaign on this plank *if* he becomes president.
Once he is president, he can also enact more transparency and a reasonable method to be removed from the list.
Here’s the dialogue we are seeing:
Liberals: We need to see more gun laws enacted.
Conservatives: We need more restrictions on who enters the country.
Liberals: In the meantime, you do nothing stop guns.
Conservatives: In the meantime, you do nothing to secure our borders.
Clearly, Trump wants to answer with “I am proposing sensible restrictions to make it harder for people on terror watch lists to get guns.”
Can liberals then say they are proposing sensible restrictions to keep criminals from entering the country? They can’t because they’re not.
Taking this idea to the NRA *before* announcing this as a campaign pledge allows him to tweak the message instead of just rushing out there in normal Trump fashion. This is a presidential move and I salute him for it.
The problem is, what happens when Trump is no longer in office.
But a better answer is "Attacks by Islamic extremists are a growing problem around the world. They are generated in large part by the preaching of radical Islamic leaders and by radical Islamic publications. Without those ideas we would not have Islamic extremists murdering people around the world. While Americans are loath to limit people's constitutional rights, it may be necessary to restrict the rights of those spreading radical Islamic ideas. We should have a national dialog on that, and consider when, why and for whom we should reduce the rights enumerated in our Constitution."
Opening that door forces the Democrats and Obama to stand up and defend the rights of the Islamic extremists.