Category: Politics

Kamala Harris And Tim Walz Really Don’t Like The Second Amendment

The first ten amendments to our Constitution are known as the “Bill of Rights” for a reason — within it are denoted numerous “rights” that belong to individuals and which are guaranteed as such against government limitation. Any American elected official who fails to grasp this foundational principle, or who understands it but refuses to accept it, is undeserving of holding public office. Take, for example, Kamala Harris.

Our current vice president, the Democrat Party nominee for president, is on record positing that one of those fundamental individual liberties expressly guaranteed against government intrusion, does not actually protect an individual right after all. So much for the clear language and history underpinning the Bill of Rights.

Not surprising, the context in which Harris has taken such a posture openly antithetical to the very principle on which the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791 is the Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms. She proudly lent her name as the then-district attorney for San Francisco, to a legal brief opposing what turned out to be the seminal 2008 Heller decision that declared expressly that the Second Amendment does in fact protect an individual right to possess a firearm.

Harris’ stance set forth in that legal brief tells us all we need to know about her disdain for the Second Amendment.

In the years since Heller, Harris has continued to support all manner of government restrictions on possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens, including among other measures, confiscatory bans on the country’s most popular rifle the AR-15, lauding Australia’s draconian gun confiscation program and most recently, criticizing the Supreme Court’s Cargill decision in June that stopped the ATF from arbitrarily declaring “bump stocks” to be “machine guns” under federal law.

The choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate is further hard evidence of where the current vice president stands with regard to the rights supposed to be guaranteed under the Second Amendment.

As governor of the North Star State, Walz has supported and signed legislation expanding so-called “red flag” laws and background checks for gun purchases that go beyond those already mandated under federal law. It was a quite different story during Walz’s tenure in the U. S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2019, however, when he needed and avidly sought the support of the NRA.

In the language du jure for what previously was known quite accurately as “flip-flopping,” Walz now declares his views have “evolved” such that he criticizes the NRA by name, and declares he is proud to be the recipient of an “F” rating from the Association that supported him previously. He has made a show of donating to charity a sum of money equal to that which he happily received from the NRA while a congressman.

And oh, how his positions have “evolved.” For example, that most popular rifle in the country among law-abiding citizens – the AR-15 — now is considered by Walz a “weapon of war” that must be banned.

As with many latecomers to the gun control movement, Walz considers his anti-Second Amendment views appropriately constitutional because, well, they help “keep our kids safe.” Lost in his probably cursory study of the historical underpinnings of the Second Amendment, and even as reflected in recent Supreme Court decisions (most notably the 2022 Bruen decision), is the fact that “keeping kids safe” is nowhere to be found even impliedly in any writings by our Founders justifying the Second Amendment (or elsewhere in the Bill of Rights for that matter).

To Walz, as to his gun control colleagues in Washington, including Kamala Harris, “common sense” equates seamlessly to “constitutional.”

It will be interesting to see how Harris’ and Walz’s extreme anti-Second Amendment views will resonate nationally with voters who do not live in the states they have represented in public office (California and Minnesota), particularly considering that private ownership of handguns for self-defense continues to rise across the country, especially among women and Black Americans. Hopefully a majority of votes tallied after the polls close Nov. 5th will reject the views of the Democrat Party’s national ticket that the Bill of Rights can be casually discarded based on their vague notion of “common sense.”

Bob Barr currently is President of the NRA.

There’s One Lesson We’d Do Well to Learn from Gun Grabbers

The gun control crowd isn’t exactly filled with my favorite people.

And on so many things, they’re completely and totally wrong.

But there’s a saying about blind squirrels and nuts. It’s not that different from the one about the accuracy of dysfunctioning wall-mounted timepieces, really. The gist is that even the most unlikely people do something right. At least, for values of “right.”

So to have the gun control crowd done something we’d do well to emulate.

Propelled by and fed up with what they see as a lack of progress when it comes to addressing America’s epidemic of gun violence, many activists like Brooks, who have felt the effects of gun violence first hand, are embracing a new tactic: running for elected office. For political organizers, this group represents a promising new cohort, whose members, if elected, may finally move the needle on gun reform.

“There is a new wave of activists-turned-candidates, particularly among women and mothers, who are no longer willing to stand by,” Brooks said. “How can we not think about our kids?”

Pinpointing the moments that led them to run for office comes easily to these candidates.

For Emily Busch, who is running for a US congressional seat in Michigan, it was the November 2021 mass shooting at Oxford high school, where her son was a freshman, that propelled her to action. The event left four dead and seven injured. “My son ran for his life with 1,700 other kids,” Busch said. “It’s something that you never ever want to experience, which is why I’m running.” …

“I think we’re going to be more passionate because we’ve experienced it,” she said, emphasizing the growing need for “leaders who understand this issue on a personal level and who can bring authentic, passionate advocacy to the legislative process”.

That same vision is driving progressive groups to find more candidates who are willing to run for office on gun violence platforms. Last February, nearly 50 new candidates gathered in Las Vegas with Demand a Seat, an initiative to train gun safety advocates to run for office and work on campaigns offered by advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety.

At the four-day boot camp, participants received mentorship from veteran politicians, training in the fundamentals of campaign building and guidance in how to effectively elevate a gun safety platform.

The program capitalizes on a trend that gun safety advocates have been witnessing for several years. “Gun safety is actually good politics now, it’s not just good policy,” said Moms Demand Action’s executive director, Angela Ferrell-Zabala. “Folks [are] choosing to run and win on gun safety.”

Here’s the thing. These aren’t just people who favor gun control. We can beat those folks easily.

What’s working for them is that these are people who have personal stories about violence committed with a firearm. It’s about how they or their families have been touched by this violence. That’s a lot harder to counter. People love stories and they respond to them. They respond to emotion, too, and these people’s stories are disturbing to think about happening to your family.

Yet there’s a counter to this and it’s not that difficult to understand.

We need people who have used guns to defend themselves to run as gun rights supporters. We need those who have been touched by violence and who remain supportive of gun rights because of how things went with their experiences. In short, we need to be able to counter with stories and emotions of our own.

Yes, the mothers of kids who were present at mass shootings is powerful, but so is the mother who defended her kids with a loaded Glock 19.

It’s easy to say we shouldn’t be basing this sort of thing on emotion. It’s not even wrong to say it. It’s just irrelevant because most people aren’t really interested in listening. They’ve been taught that their feelings are what matters, so that’s what they “think” with.

We can and should try to change that, but in the meantime, why not recruit those who have their own pro-gun stories to tell to run for office so we can put this whole thing in check?

We can learn something from the gun grabbers. We can learn how to beat them.

Republicans at RNC Don’t Budge In Face of Latest Anti-Gun Onslaught

We’ve spilled a lot of digital ink on all the people pushing for gun control in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. We’ve seen it from celebrities and athletes, to say nothing of politicians, even Biden who only calls for assault weapon bans on days that end in the letter “y.”

A lot of people are shocked that Republicans aren’t tripping over themselves to back gun control.

And let’s be real, if that was going to happen, it would happen at the Republican National Convention. Kicking off just a couple of days after the attempt on Trump’s life, you’d imagine emotions would be high and if they were ever going to do it, it would be here and now.

Only, as the Washington Times notes, it ain’t happening.

Republicans at their party convention said their commitment to gun rights and expanding concealed carry wasn’t diminished by the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

The party, according to delegates and lawmakers at the Republican National Convention, remained steadfastly opposed to sweeping gun control laws such as a ban on so-called assault weapons such as the AR-15-style rifle used by Mr. Trump’s would-be assassin.

Addressing a gathering of Second Amendment activists at the convention, Rep. Wesley Hunt of Texas said the attack Saturday on Mr. Trump only proves that firearms in the hands of law-abiding individuals are necessary.

“There are 400 million guns currently in circulation. Guns aren’t going anywhere,” Mr. Hunt said. “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, and that guy is now dead because a good guy with a gun shot him.”

He added, “Imagine how many moral lives were spared because that sniper acted and took him out immediately.”

I just want to jump in here and point something out for all those anti-gun voices that laugh at the “good guy with a gun” thing: Law enforcement are good guys, too.

Many times, the good guy with a gun is a cop of some stripe, but the issue with counting on that is that cops aren’t always present and able to protect you. Trump had an entire detail charged with protecting him and we see how that went.

Moving on…

Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida assured gun-rights activists at the gathering, which was sponsored by U.S. Concealed Carry, that the platform’s drive-by treatment of the Second Amendment did not mean Republicans were less concerned about the issue.

“Everyone has always and will forever associate the conservative movement as right in line with the principle of 2A — ’shall not be infringed,’” she said. “Just because we don’t explicitly talk about it in a political platform for a single cycle doesn’t mean that we are not absolutely adherent to the belief that Americans have the right to defend themselves.”

Ms. Cammack said Republicans in Congress are working on passing national reciprocity legislation that would enable legal gun owners to carry concealed firearms across state lines, similar to how a driver’s license works.

That’s great.

Of course, it should have passed nearly eight years ago when Republicans controlled every branch of government, but better late than never, I suppose.

Regardless, it seems Republicans at the RNC aren’t remotely interested in buckling to the anti-gun agenda, especially in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life. No one is taking it lightly or think it’s not a big deal, either. We just all seem to understand that nothing we said before Saturday’s attack has fundamentally changed. Gun control wouldn’t have prevented that attack and claiming otherwise is ridiculous.

That hasn’t stopped the usual suspects, mind you, but they’re so fanatical about pushing an anti-gun agenda, rationality isn’t really in their wheelhouse.

I’m just heartened to see gun rights remain respected at the RNC under the current circumstances.