Hillary Clinton’s running mate, U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, is anti-gun.
Like Clinton, Kaine wants to ban semi-automatic so-called “assault weapons” like the AR-15—the fastest-selling rifles in America today, with more sold over the past few years than even the Ford F-150, the best-selling vehicle in America.
Like Clinton, Kaine wants to make firearm dealers liable for crimes committed by gun purchasers, even when they’ve passed criminal background checks.
And like Clinton, Kaine wants to ban what he calls “high-capacity” ammunition magazines—magazines that are standard equipment supplied with many common handguns and rifles.
You might have seen Kaine in Miami on July 23 when Clinton introduced him as her vice-presidential running mate, as he applauded himself again and again for his anti-gun positions over the years.
But if you don’t know much more about Kaine than that, here’s a quick primer on the man who Clinton wants to make her second-in-command.
In 2000, when the Clinton White House, together with Donna Dees-Thomases and the gun-ban lobby, cooked up the so-called “Million Mom March”—an anti-gun demonstration in Washington, D.C., that was intended to serve as a pep rally for Al Gore and the Democrats’ anti-gun presidential platform—Richmond Mayor Tim Kaine spent $6,000 of taxpayers’ money to send busloads of protesters from Richmond to attend the event.On the June 26 airing of “Meet the Press,” Kaine told host Chuck Todd, “I have voted for [the assault weapons ban], and I would likely vote for it again.”
When public-interest groups cried foul at Kaine’s blatantly political abuse of tax dollars, Kaine was forced to pay the money back.
The following year, the anti-gun Brady Campaign—which was formerly known as Handgun Control Inc., and which has since merged with the Million Mom March—endorsed Kaine in his run for lieutenant governor of Virginia, trumpeting him as the “clear choice” for voters.
It’s no mystery why. Throughout his career, Kaine has pushed anti-gun policies, even while trying to portray himself as a shooter and advocate of the Second Amendment.
As Richmond mayor, Kaine advocated suing firearm manufacturers for the actions of criminals, just as Clinton seeks to do today.
As governor of Virginia, Kaine vetoed vital self-defense reforms that would have strengthened Virginians’ ability to protect themselves and their families from criminal attack.
And as recently as last year, Kaine introduced legislation—which he marketed as the “Responsible Transfer of Firearms Act”—that would hold the sellers of firearms criminally liable if criminals purchase them, even if the FBI’s NICS criminal-background check erroneously directs dealers to “proceed” with the sale of the firearm to the criminal.
Under Kaine’s bill, a person would be held strictly liable for transferring a firearm to a criminal unless he or she could prove having “taken reasonable steps to determine that the recipient [was] not legally barred from possessing firearms or ammunition.” But those so-called “reasonable steps” are not defined by the proposed law.
Current law already makes it a federal felony for anyone to transfer a firearm to a person “knowing or having reasonable cause to believe” that the recipient is a “prohibited person” barred from owning a gun. And current law already requires all federally licensed firearm dealers in America to perform a criminal-background check on all firearm purchasers.
Yet still Kaine tries to blame loose gun laws for allowing firearm dealers to sell to criminals.
So what additional “reasonable steps,” exactly, does Kaine expect firearm dealers to take to comply with this law?
They’re willing to do whatever it takes and say whatever it takes, no matter how false or freedom-devouring it might be, to win the White House and force their gun-ban gimmicks down your throat.Does he want them to profile customers on the basis of race, religion, sex, appearance or some other undefined characteristic? Or—more likely—does he simply want to put firearm dealers in fear of breaking some undefined and ultimately undefinable law, and thereby suppress the sale, purchase and ownership of firearms?
On the June 26 airing of “Meet the Press,” Kaine told host Chuck Todd, “I have voted for [the assault weapons ban], and I would likely vote for it again.”
As a U.S. senator, Kaine surely already knows that according to the FBI, the firearms he wants to ban are used in less than 2.5 percent of all homicides—less than half as many murders as are committed with “fists and feet.”
Kaine also already knows that his claim—that “40 percent of all the guns that are sold in the United States occur with no background records check”—is also bogus. It’s based on a tiny, 21-year-old survey with a cockeyed methodology and, even then only finds between 14 percent and 22 percent—not Kaine’s and Clinton’s claimed 40 percent.
Even Politifact gagged on that one, and was forced to rate it “Mostly False.” Oops.
Fact is, Kaine knows it’s false. He’s smarter than that. He doubtless knows that all of it—from his “universal background checks,” to his efforts to harass or sue gun dealers out of business, to his and Clinton’s gun bans—is bogus, and wouldn’t have prevented the crimes they point to as justification for the bans.
But apparently Sen. Kaine is willing to go along to get along, to stick with Clinton’s script.
As Jerry Kilgore, Kaine’s opponent in the 2005 election for Virginia governor put it, Kaine “will say anything an audience wants to hear.”
So the question comes back to you, again.
Kaine and Clinton are betting that the same voters—the elites, urban and suburban voters who see crime on TV and hear the media tell them every day that firearms and the freedom to own them are to blame—that carried Kaine to victory in Virginia, can carry them this year to the White House.
They’re willing to do whatever it takes and say whatever it takes, no matter how false or freedom-devouring it might be, to win the White House and force their gun-ban gimmicks down your throat.
Are you willing to do what it takes—from volunteering for pro-gun candidates, to getting gun owners registered to vote, to voting on Election Day, Nov. 8—to stop them?
