Alan Gottlieb
By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
In the wake of the mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub by a man who claimed allegiance to the ISIS terror group, the debate over gun control was not simply re-kindled.
President Barack Obama and Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton essentially poured gasoline on the fire. A law professor, writing in Rolling Stone, said the Second Amendment must be repealed. Gun prohibition lobbying groups used the atrocity to rally their troops.
Gun rights leaders fired back, and the gloves came off.
The Second Amendment Foundation posted a message on social media on day after the attack, and it went viral.
“Yesterday a coward murdered 49 individuals and wounded dozens more,” SAF said. “This is the second attack in seven months and still we have no solution to what is becoming a cancerous problem. These attacks have nothing to do with guns. These attacks have everything to do with a hatred towards the freedoms that we have in this country. Americans should be appalled that both President Obama and Hillary Clinton chose to attack the Second Amendment rights of legitimate gun owners instead of radical Islamist terrorists. Their priorities are upside down.”
SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb also issued a statement to the press in response to remarks by the president and Clinton.
During his initial response to the Orlando atrocity, the president found time to insert a remark about gun control, insisting, “This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or a house of worship, or a movie theater, or a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country that we want to be.”
“We want a country where the Second Amendment is treated as the fundamental, individual civil right it protects,” Gottlieb said in response. “Americans want a country where they’re not demonized and treated like criminals just because they want to exercise that right.”
The following day, Clinton was at a campaign stop in Cleveland when she opened her remarks stating that “today is not a day for politics.” Then she immediately launched into a tirade about guns, declaring, “If the FBI is watching you for suspected terrorist links, you shouldn’t be able to just go buy a gun with no questions asked. And you shouldn’t be able to exploit loopholes and evade criminal background checks by buying online or at a gun show.”
Critics were quick to note that the Orlando gunman did not buy his firearms at a gun show or online, and that he passed background checks at the gun store where he made the purchases.
Clinton further argued that “weapons of war” need to be taken off the streets.
NRA’s Chris Cox
“Hillary Clinton needs to open her eyes,” Gottlieb stated. “Terrorists are at war with us and are bringing that war to our streets. The murderous attacks in San Bernardino and Orlando underscore the need for all Americans to be able to fight back. But in the world Obama and Clinton want to create, they would disarm the citizens and deny that the terrorists exist.”
Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, published a piece in USA Today noting, “In the aftermath of this terrorist attack, President Obama and Hillary Clinton renewed their calls for more gun control, including a ban on semi-automatic firearms. They are desperate to create the illusion that they’re doing something to protect us because their policies can’t and won’t keep us safe. This transparent head-fake should scare every American, because it will do nothing to prevent the next attack that we all know is coming.”
In his Op-Ed piece, Cox reminded readers that, “Radical Islamic terrorists are not deterred by gun control laws. The San Bernardino terrorist attack wasn’t stopped by California’s so-called ‘assault weapons’ ban. The gun ban in Brussels didn’t prevent the terrorist attack there. And France’s strict gun control didn’t stop the two attacks in Paris, committed with fully-automatic rifles and grenades.”
“It’s time for us to admit that radical Islam is a hate crime waiting to happen,” Cox wrote. “The only way to defeat them is to destroy them – not destroy the right of law-abiding Americans to defend ourselves.”
Social media has been hyper busy with reports and opinions regarding the massacre. One man who teaches the constitution suggested in an opinion piece in Rolling Stone that it is time to repeal the Second Amendment. Writer David S. Cohen asserted that the Founders and the Constitution are wrong.
“The Second Amendment,” he wrote, “needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact.”
Gottlieb considered the argument nonsense.
“When you trade the means to protect your personal security for the promise of government protection you end up with neither,” the SAF leader said. “If we lose our Second Amendment rights, the radical Islamist terrorists win.”
