Did Caleb Keeter Really Switch On Second Amendment Stance?

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Guitarist Caleb Keeter got a lot of press yesterday. His tweet confessing his switch on the Second Amendment was popular with the anti-gun crowd, and I wrote here yesterday that I understood where something like that can come from. It’s true. I do understand where something like that can come from.

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The question we have to ask, though, is did it?

These are hardly the tweets of an ardent defender of the Second Amendment by any stretch of the imagination.

If you look at the date on these tweets, they come from the aftermath of another horrific shooting, the Newtown Massacre. So maybe emotions were running a little high again? Perhaps Keeter is just a bit excitable.

Psychological tests for gun purchases? Yeah…probably not that staunch a defender of the Second Amendment, then.

Yes, it was clearly tweeted for humor, but under what circumstances does something like that come up in conversation? Very few people would say that without having some support for the idea unless it was to intentionally set up the joke for a friend. Did that happen here? It’s impossible for us to know, but one of those alternatives seems far more likely than the other in ordinary, everyday conversations…and it’s not the setup alternative.

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Don’t get me wrong, no one wants crazy people getting their hands on guns, but the idea of taking a psychological test is alarming at the very least since some psychologists seem to think anyone wanting a gun in the first place is psychologically impaired.

There are the odd tweets that seem to give credit to his claim of being pro-gun, though most are about distrust of the federal government. There’s also this one where he quotes his father.

However, there’s remarkably little to be found about his support for the Second Amendment, but several examples of him supporting gun control measures half a decade ago. That alone causes one to question the veracity of his claim as a pro-gunner who has seen the gun control light.

Instead, it implies that he’s had at least some support for gun grabbers in the past and may have latched onto the situation and his status as a survivor of the Las Vegas shooting to advance the gun control agenda.

Is Caleb Keeter a real and recent convert to the Church of Everytown For Gun Safety, or a long-time supporter who has gone public light of recent events? Without knowing Keeter, it’s impossible to say one way or another.

What we do know is that he’s at least appeared to offer some support for gun control in the past, which means there’s no reason to take his “conversion” at face value going forward.

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Instead, it’s perhaps best to view him as any other survivor who now thinks gun control would have actually worked to keep anyone safe on Sunday. As such, he’s either misguided, misinformed, stupid, or a liar. I leave it to the reader to determine which.

Yes, I can understand how someone who is pro-gun can question their beliefs after a mass shooting that hits close to home. What I can’t understand is someone apparently misrepresenting themselves like this after such a tragedy.

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