In an email blast dripping with hysteria and what Second Amendment activists would consider gross misinformation, Shannon Watts, founder and head of “Moms Demand Action,” is asking Americans to sign an online petition “to hold gun manufacturers accountable.”
In her pitch to recipients, Watts declares, “Let’s not mince words: Gun manufacturers have avoided any responsibility for the last 20 years as their guns destroy our communities. They have enabled shootings, murders, and extremism—all while raking in record profits from the carnage.”
The message then alleges, “For too long, gun manufacturers have been able to flood our communities with guns and get away with no consequences. They’ve spent more than 20 years resisting any efforts at transparency and accountability—even as their greed destroys lives across the country.
And in those 20 years, the majority of their “innovations” have been to make guns more lethal or find new ways to circumvent existing gun laws.”
The Watts diatribe came a day before the National Review published an article by Cody J. Wisniewski, director of the Mountain States Legal Foundation’s Center to Keep and Bear Arms in which he ripped “gun control zealot” for attempting to exploit the recent Sacramento shootout to push a “wish list” that would not have prevented the tragedy. He focused on Joe Biden’s “transparent attempt to take advantage of a tragedy to push his own agenda.”
“None of the steps he proposed would have stopped the Sacramento shooting,” Wisniewski observed. “Indeed, several of them had already been taken by California before the shooting occurred.”
Biden called for the same things he has been advocating for years, with some modification. He wants to ban so-called “ghost guns” (a new demand), require background checks on all gun sales—which is already the law in California—ban so-called “assault weapons and high-capacity magazines”—despite the absence of any such firearms in the gun battle—and repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The latter is a federal law signed by President George W. Bush more than a decade ago to prevent junk/harassment lawsuits against gun makers, trying to hold them responsible for crimes committed with firearms.
None of these measures would have made any difference in Sacramento, including the ones already in place that prevented nothing.
Wisniewski puts it bluntly: “Californians, and all Americans, need to hear the full truth: Gun control isn’t just ineffective, it’s deeply immoral. Armed self-defense is a natural right, not a government-granted privilege. Gun control disarms peaceable citizens and doesn’t stop criminals. And the most important thing government can do for our safety is to stay out of the way of our right to self-defense.”
