What do you do when your gun-ban group becomes so persistent in pushing restrictive laws for law-abiding gun owners that more and more people begin to realize where you really stand on gun ownership?
For Gabby Giffords’ group, so-called Americans For Responsible Solutions, the answer is to change your name to further hide your goals.
On Tuesday, the gun control group’s name was officially changed to "Giffords." “It is about the courage of single individuals, but also the courage of members of Congress and state legislators to stand up to the gun lobby and focus on this like they never have before,” Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, told The Washington Post about the name change.
If the goal is to put the focus on the former congresswoman, what might Kelly and other leaders of the group be trying to draw our attention away from?If the goal is to put the focus on the former congresswoman, what might Kelly and other leaders of the group be trying to draw our attention away from? That’s easy—the continual slide toward support of more, and more restrictive, gun laws that would only affect law-abiding Americans, leaving criminals to ply their trade unfettered by armed citizens.
Just look at the organization’s website, and you’ll see there are few anti-gun proposal that the group doesn’t embrace. In the site’s list of main issues, it states the group opposes guns in public places. That’s another way to say it is against concealed carry for law-abiding Americans, including vehemently opposing concealed-carry reciprocity legislation currently under consideration in Congress.
The group also targets gun owners by trying to pretend criminal violence is a public health epidemic like polio or smallpox; wants to ban semi-automatic firearms used by millions of Americans for sport and self-defense; and wants to limit the number of rounds a magazine can hold, despite the fact criminals would ignore such a law. Kelly even tried to capitalize on the tragic Las Vegas shooting by spouting a lie that Hillary Clinton also used to try to halt movement of the Hearing Protection Act in Congress: “Imagine how much worse last night’s shooting could have been if the gunman had a silencer.”
Additionally, the organization puts much of its efforts into trying to pass so-called “universal” background checks. We’ve told you before how such a scheme only imposes such “universal” checks on the law-abiding and not criminals, and how such a plan would require gun registration for enforcement to even be feasible. And just this week we reported how a brand new study showed that such laws have been ineffective in three states where they have been tried.
One must wonder just what part of “infringe” the organization doesn’t understand!
Recall that Giffords’ organization isn’t the first gun-ban group to rename itself in order to hide its true agenda. The Brady Campaign was once named Handgun Control Inc., before leaders there realized that a majority of Americans didn’t want to see handguns “controlled.” But that organization’s name change did nothing to temper its rabidly anti-gun policies, which have become even more strident in recent years.
Regardless of what Giffords’ group calls itself, it will continue to push for supposed “solutions” to violent crime that would do nothing to curb crime, while infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. Whether called Americans for Responsible Solutions or simply Giffords, the gun-ban group is an enemy of freedom—and will continue to be.
Mark Chesnut has been the editor of America’s 1st Freedom magazine for 17 years and is an avid hunter, shooter and political observer.
