SenatorKamala Harris (D-CA) just published a list of Second Amendment infringements she says she’d use executive orders to enact if she wins the Democratic nomination and then the White House in 2020 and if Congress declines to make her anti-gun wish list law within her first 100 days.
That’s a lot of what ifs from Harris who is “virtue signaling” to her gun-ignorant base. Also, she is clearly going big on gun control in part because California Congressman Eric Swalwell (D) beat her to it by getting a ton of media exposure for announcing his entire campaign for the presidency is resting on gun control and confiscation.
Still, it would be a mistake not to take Harris’ threats to our freedom seriously. Her list is actually very useful since anti-gun politicians typically prefer not to give specifics that’ll rile America’s 100 million-plus gun owners.
Harris’ list is also filled with common anti-gun propaganda and errors. She starts by saying that in 2017 “nearly 40,000 people were killed by guns in America.” To support those statistics, she links to an article in The New York Times. Harris doesn’t explain that about 60 percent (some 24,000) of those deaths were suicides. Without that explanation her statistic is, to be kind, disingenuous. It is also tragic since suicides, especially among the young in the U.S., are on the rise. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that between 2000 and 2016 the suicide rate rose 30 percent across America. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death in the U.S. for those from 10 to 34 years of age after accidental deaths.
The reason for the rising suicide rate isn’t guns—as firearms have always been freely owned in our society; as a result, this isn’t an issue Harris and other progressives now running for the Democrat nomination for president can over-simplify and then use as an attack on gun owners. Instead, it is a complex issue many sociologists are trying to answer. It’s a real and growing problem that could use more attention as we seek solutions. But instead of addressing a serious issue in need of attention, Harris opted to misuse a statistic for political gain.
Harris then says the first thing she’d do is “[m]andate near-universal background checks by requiring anyone who sells five or more guns per year to run a background check on all gun sales.” This is an attempt to criminalize law-abiding behavior and thereby turn gun owners into criminals. It is also naïve. Estates often have to sell or bequeath “five or more guns” to relatives or friends of the family. That isn’t how criminals get guns. Such restrictions would only make gun ownership more expensive, burdensome and insert government agents into normal, law-abiding behavior.
Harris next says she would “[r]evoke the licenses of gun manufacturers and dealers that break the law and take the most egregious offenders to court—regardless of whether they’re protected by the Protection of Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).” This is eyewash. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is already tasked with investigating dealers and gun manufacturers. If any are breaking the law, it is already their job to provide that evidence to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
Harris then says the PLCAA is a “dangerous law which prevents victims of gun violence from holding law-breaking gun manufacturers and dealers accountable.” That’s nonsense. The PLCAA doesn’t protect gun dealers and manufacturers from criminal or civil suits if they break the law or make products that malfunction or have other issues. It only protects them from frivolous lawsuits that attempt to hold them liable for the actions of people who decide to use their legally made and sold products to commit crimes.
Much of the rest of Harris’ list regurgitates false and misleading statistics with links to Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group Everytown. Her list is a potential opening salvo of an anti-Second Amendment war on our freedom. Harris is a former Attorney General of California who once tried to insert herself in a case (Perutav.San Diego) in which the U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that San Diego County could deny anyone their constitutional right to bear arms unless a person, to the local officials’ satisfaction, could prove they really, really needed their right to bear arms.
Most-Revealing Anti-Freedom Quote
“I have two questions for you. First, why does Wells Fargo continue to put profits over people by financing companies that are making weapons that are literally killing our children and our neighbors? And secondly, why are you willing to go above and beyond what the law requires on some issues, like human rights, but not go above and beyond the law when it comes to financing the gun industry? How bad does the mass shooting epidemic have to get, before you will adopt common-sense gun safety policies like other banks have done?” –said Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) as she questioned Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee last month.
Sloan replied, “Congresswoman, we don’t put profits above people. We bank many industries across this country. We do our best to ensure that all of our customers that we bank follow the laws and regulations that are in place at the local and state and national level…. We just don’t believe it is a good idea for banks to enforce legislation that doesn’t exist.”
Pro-Freedom Quote of the Week
“Some big banks are imposing their executives’ political views on companies by refusing to do business based solely on personal opinions of the lawful products these companies sell …. These banking executives’ pronouncements are political fashion statements by companies more interested in virtue-signaling than fulfilling their responsibilities as federally-chartered financial institutions.” –Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, wrote in an op-ed as a he explained what Congress needs to do in response to attacks on the financial relationships of firearms dealers and manufacturers.
