“I’m a gun owner, but…”

How many times have you seen that phrase, only for it to be followed by the most ridiculous anti-gun arguments ever seen by man? Virtually no one starts off a sentence that way without going on to make it very clear that they have no grasp of what the Second Amendment means, represents, or anything else.

The same goes for anything that could be seen as a derivative of that. Take Mark Kelly (please?) for example:

Sure, US Senate candidate Mark Kelly loves the Second Amendment. Just ask him.

“I am a supporter of the Second Amendment, I am a gun owner,” the Democrat said at last week’s campaign debate with Sen. Martha McSally (R–AZ). “Our rights and traditions are so important.”

“I probably own more firearms than your average Arizonan,” he told another interviewer.

But Kelly’s actions show disdain for gun rights. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which Kelly co-founded, endorsed California as the best model for gun laws while giving Arizona an F.

In other words, “I’m a gun owner, but…”

See, Kelly can spout all about how he actually supports the Second Amendment, but saying you support something is quite different from demonstrating your support. While Kelly has never held public office, he build much of his name recognition with his anti-gun advocacy.

Now, I get his issue with guns. If my wife was shot by a maniac, I’d at least entertain the idea that guns were the problem. In fact, after a dear friend of mine was murdered by a maniac, I considered for about half a second whether I’d been wrong. I can see why Kelly would wonder the same thing.

Yet that doesn’t excuse the fact that he and his wife, once she recovered, have been part of a jihad against gun rights for the rest of the nation. As noted, their organization has held up California as the model for the rest of the nation, a model that severely restricts and limits the ability for law-abiding citizens to have access to the best means of self-defense. It severely restricts their ability to have the kind of arms needed to resist a tyrannical government.

Now, it’s possible that Kelly doesn’t actually agree with the official Giffords stance on this one. I won’t rule that potentiality out.

However, if that’s the case, he needs to speak up and say so.

The fact that he hasn’t, that he won’t come out and say that Giffords–an organization he co-founded with his wife–has gone too far for him regarding the acceptable level of gun control is ample reason to believe that he agrees with literally all of it.

Let’s not forget that this is a man who went out an purchased an AR-15 just to show how “simple” it was to buy such a weapon, then turned it over to law enforcement. That act alone tells you that he won’t exactly stand with the Second Amendment should he make it to the Senate.

He can say he’s a gun owner and that he supports the Second Amendment, but he needs to do a lot more than that if he thinks he can convince gun owners that he’s sincere.

Of course, at this point, I’m pretty sure doing that would be impossible.