By Tanya Metaksa
TANYA METAKSA
The ten Democrat presidential candidates who will be on the debate stage Sept. 12 in Houston, Texas all have negative positions on your Second Amendment rights.
From left to right across that stage will be Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN), Sen. Cory Booker (NJ), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders (VT), former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA), Sen. Kamala Harris (CA), Andrew Yang, (entrepreneur), former Congressman Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, and Julian Castro, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
Reading current political analysis and commentary it appears that most of them are decidedly anti-gun and anti-Second Amendment. Here we set out to accurately report their positions on the issue that is most important to the legal gun owners of America.
Since half the candidates are currently members of the US Senate and Joe Biden is a former member these five all have records as Senators that are easily verified. Senator Amy Klobuchar has introduced S.120, Protecting Domestic Violence and Stalking Victims Act, with all the other Democrat presidential senatorial contenders among the 39 co-sponsors. S. 120 would extend red flag restraining orders including gun prohibition to “dating partners” and “any other person similarly situated to a spouse.” In March the Senate Judiciary Committee held a well-attended hearing. Senator Feinstein’s S. 66, Assault Weapons Ban of 2019, also includes each one of those Senators as co-sponsors as does S. 42, requiring background checks for every firearm sale. That leaves the remaining four candidates to be classified. In order of ascending age we have Buttigieg, Yang, Castro and O’Rourke.
Thirty-nine-year-old Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind. is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Michael Bloomberg group that advocates for gun control legislation. According to CNN, he “supports universal background checks and argues that the Senate should pass the universal background check bill, H.R. 8.” Additionally, he supports bans on “assault weapons” and “high capacity magazines” and is a proponent of “red flag” legislation. He was one of the candidates who urged the U.S. Senate to reconvene in August just to pass anti-gun legislation.
Yang, an entrepreneur with a definite left-leaning philosophy, has the following on his website, https://www.yang2020.com/policies/gun-safety/. “Goals for gun safety: Create a common sense licensing policy, requiring investment and safety precautions, prevent dangerous individuals from owning guns, Ban the manufacture, sale, and transfer of weapons and accessories that make it easier for individuals to commit mass shootings. Reading those goals would lead one to believe that he would support weapon bans, licensing and registration laws, red flag laws and most other restrictive gun control proposals.”
Castro, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under Barack Obama, dedicates a part of his website to “disarming hate.” On this page he blames “gun violence” on “white supremacist extremist violence.” He goes on to list the “common sense gun safety laws” that he supports. “We need a renewed assault weapons ban and strict limits on high-capacity magazines to reduce gun fatalities. We should invest in a gun buyback program to decrease the number of guns on the streets. We need to institute Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) laws and invest in community-driven violence prevention programs. And yes, we need a federal licensing program to buy and own a gun that includes fingerprints, a law enforcement interview, and a gun safety course. These are smart, reasonable reforms that improve safety for everyone, including police officers.” He also goes on to promote repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and include 3-D printed firearms under the Federal gun control laws.
O’Rourke is a former Congressman from El Paso who decided in 2018 to run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Texas against Senator Ted Cruz. After the El Paso shooting in August he visited an Arkansas gun show and tout his newly released plan to end gun violence. His “plan” received editorial support in the New York Times when Charles M. Blow reviewed it on Sept. 4. Here is Blow’s analysis of the O’Rourke plan: “Among other things, O’Rourke’s ‘gun safety’ plan includes declaring gun violence a public health emergency, creating a national gun licensing system and registry, requiring universal background checks, implementing red flag laws and banning ‘the manufacturing, sale and possession of military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.’” O’Rourke steadfastly continues to promote his “gun buy-back” plan to confiscate every so-called assault weapon in the hands of U.S. citizens.
For gun owners and those that value the Bill of Rights there does not seem to be any Democrat worthy of consideration. As the saying goes, it appears “there is not a dime’s worth of difference” between any of them. The more outrageous the gun control scheme the more likely they will all support it.
They, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, think of gun owners as deplorable who are worthy only of scorn and derision. Today we have an entire political party bent on destroying the Second Amendment, bent on removing the right to self-defense, and bent on giving government total power over the lives of its citizens. Welcome to 2020. George Orwell’s book, 1984, was dated just 35 years too early.
