“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty…. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.”
– St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803
Cited by David Codrea. His article at Firearms News is full of important commentary on the current state of affairs, and the apparent current support for a new AWB if only enough rulers would favor it.
Don’t miss the fact that Mitch McConnell feels pressured.
“The urgency of this is not lost on any of us,” McConnell said.
But he noted the bar for legislation includes passing the House, garnering 60 votes in the Senate and a presidential signature.
He did not rule out looking at a ban on assault weapons, but noted there is a dispute over whether the 1994 ban that expired in 2004 had showed results.
“It’s certainly one of the front and center issues,” he said. “But what we can’t do is fail to pass something. What I want to see here is an outcome, not a bunch of partisan back and forths, shots across the bow.”
It’s urgent. They must do something, because politics. Codrea points out that Trump has jettisoned his base of gun owners.
Since Donald Trump was elected, the gun community has seen the president bypass Congress and ban bump stocks, support over 21 gun purchases, a Department of State over 32-round magazine ban for civilian firearms exports, push red flag laws which destroy the 1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th Amendments, and a complete ignoring of the evisceration of the 2nd Amendment in the states of: CA, OR, WA, IL, NM, NV, VT, FL, NY, NJ, MA, etc… And then there is his statement that he “doesn’t like” silencers.
Yes, and I’ll point out one more time that Florida received an influx of Puerto Ricans after the hurricane who will likely vote collectivist, Trump won North Carolina by a small margin, and he is in trouble in Ohio, possibly Georgia and perhaps even Texas. The road to victory in the next election is narrow.
But it’s like that when you have no principles and undercut the very base you used to put you in office. We are where we are because enough people didn’t ask Trump the hard questions on his core belief in gun rights (or enough people didn’t listen when I asked the hard questions on core beliefs). It appears he doesn’t have any.