Dems Embrace Anti-Gun Agenda At Convention, But What About The Campaign Trail?

Wednesday was “Gun Control Day” at the DNC, with anti-gun activists Emma Gonzalez and former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords getting some screen time to push for “common sense gun safety reform.” On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co, National Review‘s Jim Geraghty joins me to talk about how hard the Democrats will be pushing the issue between now and Election Day, starting with the fact that no matter how hard the Left tries to spin it, the Democrats’ anti-gun agenda is anything but common sense, and has little to do with actual “gun safety.”

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Geraghty notes the gun control proposals in the Democrats platform are bad enough, but pointed back to Kamala Harris’ laughter during one of the Democratic debates earlier this year when none other than Joe Biden tried to warn Harris off of her plan to impose gun control through executive actions.

“The denial of the Second Amendment as a constitutional objection is really bad, but trying to laugh it off and being cute; that’s a refusal to even engage on the issue. And I think the suspicion is that Kamala Harris doesn’t care if her gun control plans violate the Constitution. She wants to do what she wants to do.”

Would Joe Biden really serve as some guard at the gates of the Constitution and impose himself between his fellow Democrats and their attacks on the Second Amendment? Of course not. Biden will be leading the charge. Well, as much as he’s going to be leading anything if Democrats win in November.

As Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon points out in a new piece today, Biden’s new “assault weapons ban” goes much further than his original gun ban back in the 1990s.

 His plan would require anyone who legally owns one of the so-called assault weapons to either turn them into the government during a buyback or pay to register them under the same law that regulates machineguns and explosives.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris (D.) went even further during her failed primary campaign by supporting the outright confiscation of assault weapons. She advocated for a mandatory buyback of what she estimated to be up to 10 million legally owned firearms.

“We have to have a buyback program and I support a mandatory gun buyback program,” she said during an October policy forum hosted by the gun-control group March for Our Lives. “We’re going to have to have smart public policy that’s about taking those off the streets but doing it the right way.”

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As Geraghty and I discuss, I think Democrats are starting to get a little worried about their embrace of the most anti-gun agenda in history at a time of record-setting gun sales and pollsters reporting steep declines in support for gun control. Even the anti-gun stalwarts at Vox are trying to soft-pedal the Democrats love of gun control by claiming that, if the Biden/Harris ticket wins in November, gun control might not be a big priority for the administration.

I’m not buying it. Anti-gun kingpin Michael Bloomberg is spending tens of millions of dollars to help elect Joe Biden in November, and he’s spending tens of millions more backing anti-gun congressional candidates from coast-to-coast. They’re claiming that we have literal weapons of war being sold over the counter, but Vox doesn’t think that gun control will be a top priority for Democrats if they take control of the White House and the Senate? All you have to do is look at what happened in Virginia when the Democrats took complete control of the state government last year. Gun control was the top priority for the party, though they’re not talking much about it at the moment. Democrats may actually downplay their love of gun control between now and Election Day, but if they win in November I guarantee that they’ll be ramming through gun control legislation as soon as they can in 2021.

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