Fourteen Republican senators betrayed their voter base on Tuesday night when they voted to advance a gun control bill that concedes key constitutional ground to Democrats and their gun-grabbing wish list.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, his pick for lead negotiator Sen. John Cornyn, and nine GOPers committed to passing restrictive gun legislation last week. When the “bipartisan” group of senators finally produced the rushed bill’s text, Republican Sens. Joni Ernst, Todd Young, Shelley Moore Capito, and Lisa Murkowski joined the legislation’s authors (except for Sen. Pat Toomey, who was absent) to ram it through the upper chamber and then to the House of Representatives as soon as possible.
At a time when inflation exacerbated by federal spending is at all-time highs, more than a dozen Republican senators voted to proceed with legislation that funnels billions of dollars to states and government agencies, including the FBI, under the guise of stopping future deadly shootings like the one in Uvalde where 19 children and two teachers died after a shooter entered an elementary school through a backdoor and was not stopped by law enforcement until an hour later.
In reality, the bill is littered with vague language about “dating partners” and red flag laws, which allow law enforcement to temporarily confiscate guns from someone the government deems a danger to the public or themselves, which could be easily exploited by partisan bureaucrats.
The senators promoting this bill have provided little evidence that provisions such as “enhancing” background checks on gun buyers under 21 years of age will actually deter criminals from committing crimes that are already illegal yet it’s been hailed by Democrats and their cronies in the corrupt corporate media as the biggest firearm legislation since 1994.
That’s why pro-Second Amendment groups such as the National Rifle Association strongly opposed the legislation as soon as the full text was released.
“This legislation can be abused to restrict lawful gun purchases, infringe upon the rights of law-abiding Americans, and use federal dollars to fund gun control measures being adopted by state and local politicians,” the NRA said in a statement. “This bill leaves too much discretion in the hands of government officials and also contains undefined and overbroad provisions – inviting interference with our constitutional freedoms.”
Polling suggests that a plurality of American voters also believe red flag laws, like those encouraged by bullies in Congress, can and will be abused by the government and could even be used to root out political enemies. Specifically, more than 72 percent of Republican voters oppose red flag laws on the grounds that they could be easily turned against anyone who disagrees with the regime.
Some of those voters with strong convictions against gun restrictions were likely in states such as Kentucky, Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Maine, Louisiana, Missouri, Utah, Ohio, West Virginia, Iowa, Alaska, and Indiana, many of which are Republican-controlled. But instead of their interests being accurately represented by the politicians sworn to consider their concerns in Washington, thousands of voters’ constitutional rights were handed on a silver platter to Democrats by GOP leadership.
Congressional Democrats like Murphy and their allies in corporate media have already admitted that they received “considerably more than [Democrats] hoped for initially.”
That’s why Cornyn was loudly booed and heckled for the duration of his speech at the Lone Star State’s GOP convention last week. Despite facing significant backlash from his home state, Cornyn showed no remorse for failing to protect Texas constituents’ Second Amendment rights.
Instead, he doubled down and smeared the people who elected him to office as a “mob.”
This lack of remorse from Cornyn and other Republicans is not only shameful but alarming. As I noted in my column on this gun bill last week, “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?”
While a significant portion of the gun control bill is a nothing-burger focused on more inflation-fueling funding and only some gun-grabbing, Republican willingness to support it is an act of betrayal against Americans and the Constitution. It shows that the politicians already in or slated for GOP leadership are willing to give concession after concession to Democrats without regard for the voters who elected them.
Source: The Federalist
