Wasting no time after taking the helm of the U.S. House, the Democrats are pushing out a new gun control bill that ostensibly is meant to help make things safer when citizens want to acquire guns. But it's all nonsense, because at the same time, they're blocking the very measures that would help keep safeguards are in place.
It's a wild contradiction arriving by way of the party that invokes “gun safety” as its primary concern.
Just days after the one-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School father Andrew Pollack sent a tweet illustrating some of the problems exhibited by House Democrats on this measure. Said Pollack, “Democrats in Congress are trying to prevent law enforcement from knowing when illegal immigrants try to purchase weapons -- hypocrisy at its finest.”
The bill, House Resolution-8, is ironically dubbed “The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019.” The inherent humor arrives with the fact that it was penned entirely by the Dems, had all additions from the GOP scrubbed out, and was passed for a floor vote by strict party-line approval. Those scrubbed-out revisions denied by the Democrats are more than a little revealing.
U.S. Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., attempted to add an amendment to the bill regarding the notification to authorities of potential problem applicants. Clearly, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee don’t care about preventing gun violence,” said Steube. “They're simply playing politics with Americans’ Second Amendment rights.“ Democrats argued the amendment proposal, and a number of other GOP measures, were simply delay tactics -- they did not, however, mention what hurry there was to pass the legislation.
Steube’s amendment proposed that when an individual failed a federal background check, law enforcement must be notified. A similar provision had ICE becoming alerted if an illegal alien attempted to purchase a weapon. The Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee knocked down these provisions, while declaring how necessary it was for gun safety -- and that raises some serious questions.
Even more curious: Steube’s amendment used the same language found in a Democratic proposal. Called the “Unlawful Gun Buyer Alert Act,” the only difference was that this amendment would include the expansion of reporting illegals to ICE. Thus, the Dems opposed a policy of their own making, because it included illegal residents as well as criminal citizens.
This goes a long way to reveal the Democrats' true focus is on limiting gun rights, and doing little to address illegal activity surrounding the purchase of firearms.
“The fact that Democrats do not want law enforcement notified if an individual attempting to purchase a firearm fails a background check is truly troubling,” said Steube. “It is clear they are not interested in preventing gun violence or stopping the illegal purchase of firearms, but rather they are only interested in limiting the rights of law-abiding citizens to advance their own political agenda." Considering the numerous issues with background checks in recent years, blocking these types of provisions makes little to no sense.
Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. announced his need for the bill, referencing what he called a “national crisis of gun violence." In usual fashion of anti-gun proponents however, Nadler refers to slanted statistical evidence. In mentioning the 40,000 lives lost to gun violence, he has to include the vast majority -- nearly 24,000 -- who were the result of suicide. Not to diminish the loss of those lives, but that figure does not represent gun “violence” as claimed, and the measures proposed by the background checks bill would do little to nothing to impact those figures.
Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla. hit the nail on the head. “This isn't a debate, it's a show," she said. "Let’s move forward.” Demings shows how the House Democrats are only interested in expediting their desire to limit the rights of citizens. As far as what can be call “a show,” it would be the empty claims of "safety" Democrats are hustling as their primary concern.
Focusing on limiting the rights of citizens, and not wanting to address criminals or illegals trying to obtain firearms means all this is nothing but a show.
Brad Slager, a Fort Lauderdale freelance writer, wrote this story exclusively for Sunshine State News. He writes on politics and the entertainment industry and his stories appear in such publications as RedState and The Federalist.
