From the Editor: Vote for Freedom Now

by
posted on October 26, 2022
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Frank Miniter

When politicians tell us what they really want to do with our freedom, we need to take them seriously—and vote accordingly.

Take Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the former chair of the Democratic National Committee, who lost that position when WikiLeaks published emails showing she put her finger on the scale to help Hillary Clinton overcome Bernie Sanders for the Democrat’s nomination for president. When Wasserman Schultz was asked about a gun-control proposal then moving in Congress, she told MSNBC’s Alex Witt, “We absolutely have an opportunity to move forward, and let me just be clear, Alex, for those of us who support much-more-significant reform, this is just the beginning.”

By “more-significant reform” she means gun control—as in, gun and magazine bans and more.

Anyone who thought the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” which the U.S. Senate concocted, would satisfy gun-control advocates deluded themselves. For the gun-control-dreaming politicians, and the groups that fund them, this was an incremental step.

Gun-control groups did back the legislation. “We now move one big step closer to breaking the 26-year logjam that has blocked congressional action to protect Americans from gun violence,” said John Feinblatt, president of the anti-gun group Everytown for Gun Safety, as the legislation was being deliberated behind closed doors by a chosen few in the U.S. Senate. Indeed, just after the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” was signed by President Joe Biden (D), Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed a ban on so-called “assault weapons” through the House. 

Also, after the aforementioned legislation was signed into law, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) called the bill a “breakthrough agreement on gun violence—the first in 30 years.” “Breakthrough,” of course, means a new push for restrictions on law-abiding gun owners—if, that is, voters give gun-control proponents enough seats in Congress to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights on Nov. 8.

The thing is, it was hardly a “breakthrough.” In 2017, a working group in the U.S. Senate had consented to the framework for the “Fix NICS” bill that Sen. Murphy negotiated with Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Murphy, at the time, described that development as “a bipartisan breakthrough on gun legislation,” as he was hoping they would soon pass even more restrictions on our right to keep and bear arms. 

The Fix NICS bill passed and was signed into law by then-President Donald J. Trump (R). This occurred in the wake of the tragedy in Sutherland Springs, Texas, when a murderer passed a background check he never should have passed. The Air Force had failed to put that murderer’s records into the system.

It is easy for the gun-control crowd to forget the Fix NICS Act, however, as it didn’t ban popular firearms or magazines, and it targeted criminals, not law-abiding citizens. The “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” however, was a sign of weakness to the gun-control crowd. They now think they have an opening to take away the Second Amendment with gun bans, prohibitions on loaning or selling guns to friends and family members and much more.

This is a good lesson for pro-freedom lawmakers and voters to remember. To put it plainly, the “do-something” gun-control crowd is not stopping willingly. They need to be voted out.

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