Now that Rep. Eric “blink-and-you’ll-miss-me” Swalwell is out of the 2020 Democratic race, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) is trying her best to position herself as the TOUGH candidate on guns. While Harris is probably too smart to follow Swalwell’s lead and actually threaten to drop a nuclear bomb on Americans who won’t give up their guns, she’s proving daily that she is no less radical when it comes to getting her way on gun control. On Saturday, she wrote on Twitter that she would not wait for legislative action to implement her unconstitutional scheme.
“Gun violence is the leading cause of death for young Black men in America,” she wrote. “We must stop this. When president, I will take executive action to ensure guns do not fall into the wrong hands.”
Oh, Ms. Harris, there IS no such executive action. All you can do with your pen and phone is make sure that guns stay out of the RIGHT hands, i.e., Americans who actually give a damn about the law.
Harris signaled the importance of gun control to her campaign in April, when she made it the centerpiece of her second policy proposal. At a CNN town hall that month, she said the American people were tired of waiting for Congress to act.
“There are people in Washington, D.C., supposed leaders who have failed to have the courage to reject a false choice which suggests you’re either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” Harris said. “We need reasonable gun safety laws in this country, starting with universal background checks and a renewal of the assault weapon ban, but they have failed to have the courage to act.”
At the time, Harris said she would give Congress only 100 days to come up with a gun control package that suited her agenda. If they failed to do so, she said, she would sign a series of executive actions mandating background checks for all people who buy guns from firearms dealers who sell more than five guns in a year, actions that would put stricter regulation on firearms manufacturers, and prohibit unmarried domestic abusers from being allowed to purchase a gun.
Her most indefensibly silly proposal came a month later, though. That’s when she pledged to sign an executive order banning the importation of AR-15-style rifles. Apparently she’s under the mistaken impression that the majority of these rifles are made outside the United States? Whatever the case may be, it’s another clear look into the illogical, uninformed ideology of left-wing gun control.
Rabid gun control proposals may play well on the Democratic primary stage, but they aren’t going to help the Democrats win back the Midwestern states that went for Trump in 2016. Then again, it doesn’t seem like many of these candidates are even thinking about that. Truthfully, it doesn’t seem like they’re doing much thinking at all.