By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Joe Biden lied about guns, Second Amendment rights and nearly everything else so often that even his staunchest supporters stopped taking him seriously. The country’s 46th President beclowned himself with his own falsehoods.
Biden was a classic fabulist. He invented stories and assigned himself the starring role. Whether he was singlehandedly confronting hunters armed with standard-capacity mags in a Delaware swamp, exaggerating the efficacy of the 1994 federal Assault Weapon Ban or making up colonial cannon prohibitions, Biden received more Pinocchios than Disney, which is one of the reasons why he’ll be sitting in a beach chair rather than behind the Resolute Desk for the next four years.
By comparison, Kamala Harris has been much more circumspect about her anti-gun plans, and despite her maniacal cackle, could prove a more serious opponent to our Second Amendment rights than her former boss ever imagined possible.
Last year, most likely at the insistence of Barack Obama, Biden put Harris in charge of the new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, which Biden said would “centralize, accelerate, and intensify our work to save more lives more quickly.”
The Office has no website. Its budget has never been made public. Its staffing levels are not known. It operates in secret, without oversight and wields tremendous power. Only three staffers were identified. One has a long association with Obama.
Almost immediately, it became clear that the Office was an incubator and a clearinghouse for anti-gun policy that it pushed out to blue states.
In December 2023, Harris hosted a gaggle of state lawmakers at the White House to showcase the Office’s new gun-control policies. The names of the attendees were not released, nor were the details of the meetings. None of the meetings were recorded or transcribed.
After overseeing the Office, Harris’ anti-gun rhetoric has sharpened, and it is clear what she has in store for law-abiding gun owners if she replaces Biden on a permanent basis.
#1 killer campaign
“Gun violence is the number-one case of death for children in America – think about that. Not some kind of health disease,” Harris announced Sept. 14, 2023, in a moderated conversation at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. “And we don’t have to be very creative to figure it out: assault weapons ban; background checks, because you might want to know before someone can buy a lethal weapon if they’re a danger to themselves or others; red flag laws. That is reasonable.”
Both Biden and Harris cited this number-one-cause-of-death fiction at a host of different venues. They still do, even though it has been soundly debunked.
When they came up with this claim, the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention cited a 2022 study by the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University – not the most credible of sources. Researchers included adults, both 18- and 19-year-olds in their children’s study. If the adults are excluded from the data set, the leading cause of death for children is motor vehicle accidents.
Harris was undeterred by the fact checkers, which included The Washington Post. She needed guns to be the leading cause of death of children to push for more gun control. For her, the ends justified the means.
Eight days later, Harris repeated the false claim but added a label to her opponents.
“Today, however, gun violence is the number-one cause of death for children in America. But instead of protecting our children, extremists obstruct,” she said.
On Oct. 12, 2023, during a moderated conversation at the College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, Harris once again cited the false claim as a reason for more gun control.
“I have been working on this for a long time. And I will tell you that, again, there – there – it’s not rocket science in terms of what we need to do. Okay? But you got a bunch of feckless people who lack courage, who are in the United States Congress, who are pushing a false choice, which suggests you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” she said. “And it’s a false choice. I’m in favor of the Second Amendment, but we need an assault weapons ban. We need universal background checks. We need red flag laws.”
Harris has never stopped citing these false cause-of-death statistics. She brought them up again just two months ago at a moderated conversation at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
“So, let’s start with the very tragic fact that gun violence is the leading cause of death for children in America – not car accidents, not cancer – gun violence. Number one cause of death for children in America right now. One in five Americans has a family member that was killed by gun violence,” she said.
National red flag campaign
The U.S. Supreme Court hinted in Caniglia v. Strom, that it may review the constitutionality of red-flag laws.
“This case also implicates another body of law that petitioner glossed over: the so-called “red flag” laws that some States are now enacting. These laws enable the police to seize guns pursuant to a court order to prevent their use for suicide or the infliction of harm on innocent persons. They typically specify the standard that must be met and the procedures that must be followed before firearms may be seized. Provisions of red flag laws may be challenged under the Fourth Amendment, and those cases may come before us. Our decision today does not address those issues,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a concurring opinion.
The White House didn’t take the hint. Last March, Harris launched the National Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) Resource Center.
“The Resource Center will assist states, local governments, law enforcement, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service providers, and behavioral health and other social service providers in optimizing the usage of red flag laws – laws that allows a family member or law enforcement to seek a court order to temporarily take away access to guns if they feel a gun owner may harm themselves or others,” according to a White House “Fact Sheet” released March 23.
The ERPO Resource Center was funded by Department of Justice grants and is operated by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Its critics have said it is nothing more than a mechanism to bribe the states into implementing red-flag laws.
“The Vice President is calling on states to pass red flag laws and to use Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) funding to help implement laws already enacted,” the release states.
Takeaways
Harris has become the country’s highest ranking anti-gun activist. She is not opposed to lying, spinning or gaslighting the public as long as it’s strategic and meets her needs. Neither will she hesitate in demonizing those who oppose her gun control schemes, such as labeling them feckless or extremists.
Quite frankly, Kamala Harris comes across as goofy, but she has surrounded herself with a team of dedicated individuals who are anything but. They are as committed to infringing upon our Second Amendment rights as we are to preserving them.
We underestimate Harris and her team of experienced anti-gun advocates at our peril.
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