Since President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate efficiency final week, increasingly more individuals—together with a few of his largest supporters—are starting to speak about changing him on the Democratic presidential ticket. Even many who declared him “completely match” only a few years in the past at the moment are saying he must step apart and let another person run in opposition to former President Donald Trump.
Whereas such a transfer is likely to be good for these Democrats who hate former President Donald Trump with a ardour, it possible wouldn’t be so good for American gun homeowners, gun makers and gun sellers. Right here’s why.
The probably substitute for Biden can be Vice President Kamala Harris. Whereas her final run for the presidency (2020) was a catastrophe, she is extra fanatic about banning firearms than even Biden.
Many TTAG readers will possible recall that Harris has not solely expressed a want to ban frequent semi-auto rifles that gun-ban advocates name “assault weapons,” however she has additionally spoken in favor of confiscating these firearms from the tens of millions of Individuals who legally personal and use them. At a presidential marketing campaign occasion in 2019, then-candidate Harris mentioned that confiscation of generally owned semi-automatic firearms just like the AR-15 was “a good suggestion.”
Selling a compelled “buyback” program (in fact, the federal government can’t “purchase again” one thing it by no means owned), Harris said, “We’ve to work out the main points—there are a variety of particulars—however I do… We’ve to take these weapons off the streets.”
She’s additionally equally as large of supporter as President Biden of repealing the Safety of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). Signed by President George W. Bush in 2005, after anti-gun teams filed a number of frivolous lawsuits in opposition to American firearms producers in an try and eradicate gun management by bankrupting the trade, the PLCAA was designed to protect producers from legal responsibility for acts dedicated by those that used their merchandise illegally. Now Harris and Biden misrepresent the regulation by mendacity that the gun trade is the “solely trade in America that has immunity.”
Final yr, Harris was tabbed with being the highest canine of the gun-ban facet of Biden’s marketing campaign. As her first order of enterprise she gave a speech at a Gun Violence Consciousness Day occasion in Springfield, Illinois. And as traditional, she mentioned a variety of the identical previous, deceptive issues that she and Biden have been saying for years.
It’s no shock that Harris trotted out the brand new gun-banner buzz phrase in her first speech as marketing campaign gun-ban queen. “The primary reason behind demise for the youngsters of America is gun violence.”
Such an announcement would make you assume that your 4-year-old daughter or 8-year-old granddaughter is extra more likely to die by gunfire than every other doable means. And that’s precisely what Harris and different gun-ban proponents need you to assume.
In actuality, being killed by gunshot is the primary reason behind demise of Individuals ages 1 to 19, with the overwhelming majority of these murders and suicides occurring amongst 16- to 19-year-olds. In keeping with statistics from the Facilities for Illness Management, main causes of demise for what most individuals think about “kids” are: ages 1-4, accidents, then congenital malformations; ages 5-9, accidents, then most cancers; and ages 10-14, accidents, then suicide.
Other than Harris, the opposite two most-talked-about Biden replacements are Hillary Clinton and Gavin Newsom—each themselves gun-ban advocates who’ve put infringing on Individuals’ Second Modification rights on the high of their to-do checklist their total careers.
Clinton, in fact, has by no means seen a gun ban she doesn’t like, and when she ran for president in 2008 and 2016 was possible essentially the most anti-gun candidate to ever search the workplace. As Clinton wrote in her e-book “Residing Historical past” in 2003, “Invoice and I introduced a proposal to boost the authorized age of handgun possession to 21, and restrict purchases of handguns to at least one per 30 days.”
In 2015, she went so far as to slur semi-auto rifle homeowners as harmful extremists when she mentioned of these individuals, “We can not let a minority of individuals—and that’s what it’s, it’s a minority of individuals—maintain a viewpoint that terrorizes the vast majority of individuals.”
As for California Gov. Gavin Newsom, he heads the state with essentially the most restrictive firearms legal guidelines—and in addition, not so satirically, essentially the most “energetic shooter” incidents in 2023, in accordance with the FBI. Newsom additionally has by no means met a gun management scheme he hasn’t favored, as attested by his continuous efforts to foist extra infringements upon the gun-owning residents of California.
In the long run, both of the three might be extra elected at this level than feeble-minded Biden, who proved his incapacity to control final Thursday night time. Irrespective of who finally ends up being on the poll reverse Trump in November, nonetheless, she or he will likely be a religious gun-ban advocate whose wholehearted efforts—and demanding judicial appointments—will work to additional undermine the precise to maintain and bear arms. That’s not the sort of individual I can help.
