Swalwell calls gun registry facts "lies"

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Rep. Eric Swalwell is one of many lawmakers from California who have fully embraced the anti-gun jihad through the years. In fact, that was the crux of most of his failed presidential campaign…which might be why it failed, truth be told.

Advertisement

Yet that failure hasn’t deterred the California Democrat.

In fact, if anything, he seems more interested in pushing the anti-gun narrative, even dismissing actual facts as lies over at Newsweek.

For decades, one of the most tried and true scare tactics by the gun lobby is that the government—specifically Democrats—are coming for your guns. These misinformation campaigns have been used for years to scare law-abiding Americans into thinking they are going to be put under government surveillance to confiscate their guns.

Let’s be crystal clear—the Biden administration has no secret plan to take away your guns.

While some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have carried the water for the gun lobby over many years, there has been a recent uptick in letters and statements to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) which falsely claim there is a “backdoor gun registry.” Although this is patently false, right-wing media continues to amplify this lie.

Except, it’s not a lie.

First, let’s understand exactly what we’re talking about here.

When an FFL license holder closes up shop, they have to send all their remaining paperwork to the ATF. Since most small businesses close well within the 20-year window that these dealers are required to maintain records on individual sales, it means the ATF gets the lion’s share of the records ever produced.

This has been the norm for years, of course, but lately, the ATF has been pushing to digitize these records. Why? So they’re more easily searched for gun tracing information.

Advertisement

Now, understand that this same paperwork is maintained at all existing gun stores and that means you have paperwork on most gun sales carried out in this nation.

Couple this with the push by people like Swalwell for universal background checks, thus creating still more paperwork on every lawful firearms sale, and it sure as hell smells like a gun registry to me.

Sure, it’s not an overly efficient one, but it’s a gun registry nonetheless.

These are basic facts, facts that aren’t even really in dispute by Democrats. How is calling it what it is a lie?

The reason is that people like Swalwell know that the term “gun registry” scares people. He doesn’t want people scared because if they do, they’re not likely to vote for Democrats. They won’t give money to people like Swalwell, either.

So, he tries to pretend that what we can all see plain as day is really something else and that these simple, undisputed facts are really nothing but fabrications.

In other words, Newsweek gave Swalwell space to try and gaslight the American people.

Of course, considering Swalwell’s history, we should just be glad he’s not threatening to nuke everyone for calling a gun registry a gun registry.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Sponsored