As President Donald Trump (R) finished his State of the Union address on February 4, 2020, then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D)—who, as is customary, was seated above and behind Trump in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives—picked up her copy of Trump’s speech and, with dainty fingers making long careful tears, theatrically ripped the speech into several pieces.
When asked afterward why she did it, Pelosi said, “It was the courteous thing to do, considering the alternative.”
It would be difficult to write a better metaphor for Rep. Pelosi’s leadership—including her long disdain for American citizens’ Second Amendment-protected freedom.
Throughout her congressional career, Pelosi has supported every gun-control law and regulation that occurred to the anti-gun lobby.
One of the more controversial moments in her career occurred in 2013 when Pelosi appeared on Fox News and seemed to confuse the First and Second Amendments—suggesting that the “right to a gun” was derived from the First Amendment. While the slip may have been inadvertent, her disdain for the average citizen’s right to keep and bear arms was so complete she did not even bother to understand it.
In 2009, Pelosi remarked that “we want [guns] registered. We don’t want them crossing state lines.”
Throughout her tenure in the peoples’ house, which began in 1987 when President Ronald Reagan (R) was in office, Pelosi inflated and twisted statistics in order to advocate for the control of we the people she so desires.
She also often conflated law-abiding citizens with criminals. In 2017, she tweeted: “Inviting violent criminals to carry concealed weapons doesn’t save lives… . Yet the @HouseGOP just voted to do exactly that.”
This post was so blatantly untrue that even The Washington Post “fact checker” called it “misleading.”
Pelosi has, of course, repeatedly called for reinstating a federal “assault-weapons” ban—she voted for the original one in 1994. She claimed in a speech on the House floor that “an assault weapon ban can work because it has worked before.” (Actually, a U.S. Department of Justice study found that the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban had no effect on crime.)
She supported (and helped pass in the House) gun‐control bills; for example, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 (H.R. 8) and the so-called Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022.
Gun-control groups lauded her many attempts to take away and further restrict this civil right; in fact, Everytown for Gun Safety named Pelosi its “Gun Sense Lawmaker of the Year” in 2020.
When she ripped up Trump’s speech on camera, and in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives during a State of the Union speech, Pelosi did what she was trying to do with the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights during her 38-years in Congress. Americans who cherish their freedom will not miss her.
