Republican cave to the Far-Left gun control agenda has officially arrived

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Republican Party Far-Left gun control agenda Second Amendment

The Republican Party’s cave to the Far-Left gun control agenda has officially arrived

A gang of 20 senators (10 Democrats and 10 Republicans) struck a bipartisan gun control framework over the weekend, marking the official arrival of the Republican Party’s cave to the Far-Left’s anti-Second Amendment agenda.

Not to say I told you so, but I told you the odds were good that Republicans would support Joe Biden’s gun control agenda back when he had only been in office a few weeks — a prediction that came true following the mass-shooting in Uvalde, Texas when the spineless cowards running the Republican Party joined their Far-Left allies to begin laying the groundwork.

It only took the cowards two weeks to come up with a plan (via Politico.com):

In a Sunday morning statement, 10 senators in each party announced support for the deal. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer blessed it, vowing to “put this bill on the floor as soon as possible,” and President Joe Biden said it “would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.” The president urged both chambers of Congress to finish the package quickly.

The emerging package is anchored around extra scrutiny for gun buyers under the age of 21, grants to states to implement so-called red flag laws and new spending on mental health treatment and school security. While translating the agreement into legislation will take time, the large group of supportive senators shows that the package could gain 60 votes on the Senate floor before heading to the House.

“Our plan saves lives while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans. We look forward to earning broad, bipartisan support and passing our commonsense proposal into law,” the 20 senators said in their statement.

The reason for optimism concerning passage of the far-left gun control bill comes from the fact that 10 Republicans created the framework, meaning that there are 10 Republicans likely to vote for passage on a final bill along with the certain 50 Democrat votes. The 10 Republicans are:

  • John Cornyn (R-TX) Mitch McConnell’s hand-picked negotiator
  • Thom Tillis (R-NC)
  • Susan Collins (R-ME)
  • Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
  • Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
  • Pat Toomey (R-PA)
  • Roy Blunt (R-MO)
  • Richard Burr (R-NC)
  • Rob Portman (R-OH)
  • Mitt Romney (R-UT)

It should be noted that Portman, Toomey, Blunt, and Burr are all retiring at the end of the year, so the political ramifications of their cave to the Far-Left gun control agenda is moot.

One of the Democrat members of this group is Richard Blumenthal who, along with Lindsey Graham, introduced the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Act (FERPA) over four years ago. Under their federal version of Extreme Risk Protection Orders (aka ERPO or red flag), the decision to seize guns from individuals who have committed no crime would be moved from the state courts to the federal courts.

A slightly less radical but every bit as unconstitutional national red flag law was introduced by Marco Rubio and Susan Collins shortly after the Blumenthal/Graham bill made headlines. Under their Extreme Risk Protection Order and Violence Prevention Act of 2019, taxpayer money would be used to incentivize coerce states into passing red flag laws. This bill served as the model for the “bipartisan” agreement announced over the weekend.

The Republican Party’s cave to the Far-Left’s gun control agenda is driven by the desire to curry favor with the voters ahead of the upcoming midterm election, and they might succeed, but the real lesson to learn here is that there’s simply no difference between Democrats and Republicans — a particularly frightening prospect when we consider some of the other ideas we’re hearing from the Far-Left.

For example, Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) is suggesting expanding the Supreme Court and then packing it with pro-gun-control justices along with calling for an end to the filibuster in the U.S. Senate to make it easier for Democrats to pass gun control legislation.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) — one of the 10 Democrat members of the Gang of 20 — has proposed creating a national gun licensing program require persons wanting to purchase a firearm to get approval from the Department of Justice in the form of a license. And retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, a man who once wrote a book calling for a gun control amendment to the Constitution because the right to bear arms shouldn’t be protected — the same argument Joe Biden makes — is calling for the Second Amendment to be repealed outright.

For the “this never would happen if Trump were still in the White House” crowd, let me remind you that ERPOs had the blessing of Donald “take the guns first, go through due process second” Trump when he was in office.

Donald Trump has always been pro-gun control and anti-Second Amendment, and as president, he wasn’t shy about doing an end run around the Constitution whenever the mood struck him. For example, he used an executive order to ban bump stocks — an order that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down last year.

During his presidency, Trump’s anti-gun-rights agenda took other forms, such as:

If those three things sound familiar, it might be because they were included in Joe Biden’s anti-gun rights executive orders announced shortly after beginning his presidency.

And for the “vote Republican to save freedom” crowd, let me remind you of another gun control bill introduced by Marco Rubio when the GOP controlled Washington; the Threat Assessment, Prevention, and Safety Act of 2019 (TAPS Act), a bill that puts red flag laws on steroids.

Co-sponsored with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) — another Democrat on the Gang of 20 — Rubio’s TAPS Act would have required law enforcement to give EVERYONE a personal threat assessment (adults and children) in order to single out those deemed to be a future threat and then “stop dangerous individuals before they can commit an act of violence.” Though it failed to become law at the time, provisions of the TAPS Act are receiving new life. (Emphasis mine)

In hindsight, calling Republican support of Far-Left gun control a “cave” isn’t quite correct because that implies the party was at one time opposed to the gun control agenda when the exact opposite has been true for a very long time.

There can be little doubt that Joe Biden and the rest of the Far-Left have every intention of destroying the Second Amendment, and thanks to the cave from their allies in the Republican Party, we have officially arrived at that destruction.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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