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Giffords vows punishment for those who opposed gun control

July 18, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

What happened to then-Rep. Gabby Giffords was awful. It’s amazing she managed to survive her wounds.

However, since that day, she’s been campaigning to infringe on your right to keep and bear arms through the group she founded named after her. The group is desperate to take away our guns and anyone with two eyes can see that.

Recently, a number of Republicans voted in favor of gun control. It’s relatively weak as gun control goes, but it was still gun control.

Not everyone in the GOP sided with the measure, though, which brings me back to Giffords. It seems she’s promising to make those who didn’t sign on pay.

A gun policy reform advocacy group founded by and named after former Democratic Arizona Congresswoman and gun violence survivor Gabby Giffords is vowing to take action in this year’s midterm elections against those members of Congress who opposed the gun control legislation recently signed into law by President Biden.
In an interview this week with Fox News Digital, Giffords’ managing director Robin Lloyd praised the largely Democrat-backed legislation called the Safer Communities Act, as well as the 15 Republican senators who voted in favor of its passage, and touted the organization’s plans to spend $10 million this election cycle advocating for policies to end gun violence.
“I think it’s really significant that we, at the federal level, have finally had a breakthrough in gun policy for the first time in almost 30 years, and that 15 Republicans in the Senate, who have historically refused to take any action at all on the issue of gun safety, came together to help pass this legislation that was signed into law,” Lloyd said of the bill, which has been described as the strictest piece of gun control legislation in decades.
“I think that really shows you how big of an issue this is for American families all across this country,” she added. “American families were talking about this day in and day out … And that legislation was very much in response to those conversations.”

It’s adorable that these tools actually think they can actually do anything to impact the vast majority of Republican senators’ re-election hopes.

Now, understand, polling has shown broad support for gun control. However, polling has also shown how that support isn’t enough to switch people to vote for Democrats because those voters are more interested in things like the economy.

In other words, there’s not really a hell of a lot Giffords can do.

Most of those Republicans are going to be found in very pro-gun states, the kind of states where opposition by Giffords will be a selling point for a lot of candidates.

But I’m curious just when groups like Giffords are going to get the NRA treatment, where they’re constantly accused of buying elections and of outright corruption for the money they donate to gun control candidates. After all, say what you want about the NRA, they’re not the ones pushing an agenda that will strip us of our civil liberties.

The upside is that I don’t think Giffords is going to make the impact they think they will. In fact, I’d be surprised to see them make any impact at all.

Boebert introduces bill to repeal bipartisan gun law

July 15, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Second Amendment credentials aren’t exactly in doubt. The Colorado Republican first made her name by having a restaurant where all the wait staff openly carried firearms. That was well before she ran for office.

Since she’s been in Congress, she’s been a bit of a right-wing firebrand, but she’s lost none of her pro-Second Amendment nature.

Now, she’s introduced legislation to repeal the last bit of gun control passed.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has introduced a bill that would completely repeal the gun control legislation that Democrat President Joe Biden just signed into law after Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and other establishment Republicans championed through Congress alongside Democrats, Breitbart News has learned exclusively.
Boebert’s bill, which stretches barely beyond one page onto a second one, is titled the “Shall Not Be Infringed Act.” What it does, very simply, is completely repeal the so-called “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” the legislation that sailed through Congress earlier this summer promoting red flag laws using federal funds.
“The so-called ‘Bipartisan Safer Communities Act’ tramples on the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens and will have no significant impact in stopping mass shootings and deterring gun violence,” Boebert told Breitbart News. “This poorly written law was negotiated behind closed doors by a small group of Senate RINOs that do not reflect the interests and values of the American people. Shockingly, this bill was rushed to the floor a few days after introduction and didn’t receive a single congressional hearing or markup despite the legal implications for millions of gun owners in America. Rather than hardening building security and allowing resources to be spent on training and staffing schools with more armed personnel, this bill seeks to bribe states with promises of Washington money for adopting red-flag gun seizure laws. The Shall Not Be Infringed Act fully repeals this unconstitutional bill and defends the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.”

Of course, nothing Boebert says here is untrue. Every bit of it is accurate.

However, that doesn’t mean this bill is going to go anywhere.

Remember that Boebert is in the House of Representatives. That’s a chamber fully controlled by the anti-gun Democrats, a chamber that fully supported this particular bill. It’s not likely they’ll then vote to repeal the law they just passed.

In other words, this bill is just one of those things that will make us smile and dream, but doesn’t have a chance in hell of actually becoming law.

I mean, even if it somehow passed the House, it would still have to get through an evenly split Senate and get the signature of President Joe Biden. While the president’s signature could likely be obtained–it’s not like he’d know what he was signing anyway–it’s not likely it would end up in front of him in the first place.

So what does this bill represent?

Well, it’s a reminder from Boebert that she opposes this bill and wants to see it repealed. Sometimes, that’s enough. It’s enough to remember that at least some elected officials opposed the bill and that it wasn’t the entire Republican party that sold us out.

It might not become law, but that doesn’t mean the bill doesn’t matter.

Op-ed hopes bipartisan bill opens door for more gun control

July 4, 2022 by Tom Knighton Leave a Comment

Part of why I opposed the bipartisan gun control bill, despite knowing it doesn’t really do much, is because it suggests that moving the needle toward more regulation is possible. It lets anti-gun zealots believe that they have an opportunity to pass more laws in the near future.

It’s not the whole reason, mind you, but a part of it.

And, sure enough, we have an op-ed hoping exactly that.

Fifteen Republicans in the Senate and 14 in the House joined with congressional Democrats this week to break more than 25 years of inaction on gun safety. That these Republicans, many of whom had ratings of A or A-plus from the National Rifle Association, defied the gun lobby with their support of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act suggests they saw the political peril in doing nothing about the gun violence gripping the country. Indeed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who voted for the bill, admitted as much when he said he hoped GOP support for the measure “will be viewed favorably by voters” as the party seeks to regain the majority next year.
The public sentiment for gun safety that has steadily built with each mass shooting, finally forcing Republicans to drop their ironclad opposition, offers hope that the legislation, signed into law by President Biden on Saturday, will be the first and not last step in bringing some rationality to the nation’s gun laws.

First, that bill was not “rationality” regarding gun laws in this country. For it to be so, it would have to have been something that might actually have worked to keep people safe.

Gun control doesn’t.

Yet let’s note the hopeful tone, the idea that this is just a stepping stone toward more regulation. Raise your hand if you knew this was coming.

This was never going to be the endpoint for them. Mass shootings could stop right this second, even before the law has had a chance to do anything, and they’d still keep pushing for gun control. For them, this is the beginning.

What they don’t get is that they got literally all they were going to get.

I mean, do you think Sen. Chris Muphy sat down with Sen. John Cornyn and just asked for the stuff that was in that bill? Of course not. They started with wanting a whole lot more and negotiated for what they could get. Even that has created a great deal of heat for those Republicans who backed the bill.

You can’t really think they’re going to give up more, now, can you?

That’s a silly question because clearly, the answer is “yes.”

That’s where they’re likely wrong. While the constituency may have been willing to accept this bill, the big wants for the gun control side will likely remain well out of their grasp.

For that, I’m thankful.

Yet I also can’t blame them for looking at it this way. Why wouldn’t they? After all, the only side that’s ever given up ground on the gun control debate has been the Republican side. Democrats don’t move backward. They don’t compromise except to take a little less than they really wanted. So of course they’d figure they’ll get more.

And while I doubt they’ll get it now, I can’t say definitively that they’ll never get it.