The corporate media is abuzz with news that senators have reached a “bipartisan” gun deal that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell endorsed on Tuesday — but sacrificing Americans’ constitutional rights to hoaxing Democrats who have and will use their power to target their political enemies is nothing for Republicans to be proud of. It’s the type of ideological surrender that they should lose their jobs and leadership positions over.
The bill text is still not available but from what Democrat Sen. Chris Murphy’s Twitter feed and the official framework indicate, the legislation could include sweeping measures such as problematic red flag laws that overstep too many constitutional bounds for Republicans to comfortably sacrifice.
Despite concerns that the legislation could compromise Americans’ Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, McConnell and 10 of his squishiest GOP colleagues including Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Rob Portman of Ohio, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mitt Romney of Utah, Bill Cassidy of Lousiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania plan to join the Democrats’ anti-gun escapades. Together, they caved to the emotional blackmail wielded by Murphy and amplified by the corporate media.
Republicans have no good reason to trust Democrats to skilfully create legislation that is mindful of Americans’ rights. Nor do GOPers have reasons to support legislation that yields little evidence of actually deterring criminals from committing crimes that are already illegal.
After all, the leftist legislators supporting the gun deal are the same politicians who supported spying on a president, falsely accused a Supreme Court nominee-turned-justice of rape, defended the Biden administration when it sicced the feds on parents who wanted a say in what happens in their child’s classrooms, and so much more.
In the past, when Democrats have been given inch-sized opportunities to restrict gun rights, they’ve sought to take miles and ban certain guns and gun parts altogether.
As my colleague Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi recently noted, historically, “Democrats have not only tried to expand the definition of partner” in domestic violence-motivated gun grabs but have also tried to broaden “the reasons for losing your gun rights to include many types of non-violent misdemeanors.”
Yet, some of the most powerful GOPers in Congress, even those who have sworn to protect the Second Amendment, are salivating to sign dangerously broad and likely deliberately unspecific legislation crafted by these same Democrats.
Congressional Democrats like Murphy and their allies in corporate media have already admitted that the gun deal includes “considerably more than [Democrats] hoped for initially.”
That’s because the Republicans involved in negotiations pressured for nothing, so they got nothing.
McConnell’s gun restriction lead negotiator Cornyn likes to brag about his A+ rating from the National Rifle Association but the Republican’s former promises not to restrict Americans’ rights to guns have been repeatedly broken and will be violated if this new bill passes. Even Cornyn’s meaningless boasting about everything excluded from the Democrats’ bill signals there’s nothing that was included that he found worthy of praising.
So not only have Republicans signed onto more gun restrictions but they’ve also ceded constitutional ground to Democrats who have a history of abusing their self-assigned power to gatekeep who can access a firearm.
Yielding power to Democrats like Murphy who exploited the Texas tragedy to orchestrate a gun grab is nothing for McConnell or any Republicans to be proud of. As a matter of fact, that’s something worth forcing them out of office over.
The people most at risk of losing in this “bipartisan” deal are Republicans who will never get the benefit of a winning compromise with Democrats and law-abiding citizens who under the Consitution have every right to own and use guns. Most congressional Republicans have sworn to protect these rights but right now, 10 of the ones closest to McConnell are not.
These Republicans were chosen carefully because most of them are not at risk of getting voted out of office soon, but the dozens of other Senate GOPers who see the problems with handing over control of Americans’ rights should do everything they can to bar them from leadership. If Republicans were willing to cave on the Second Amendment, how much emotional manipulation will it take for them to surrender on other key conservative issues?
Source: The Federalist
