Anti-gun activists have “forced” Democrat candidates for president to “take a stand on gun control,” according to a Yahoo News report, and they all seem to be scrambling to stake out their positions, the more far-reaching the better.
Emboldened by survey results, such as the one Pew Research conducted last year that showed 81 percent of Democrats and 50 percent of Republicans support a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” the slate of 2020 Democrat candidates aren’t shy about discussing the issue. But ask a gun owner if they’ve ever participated n such a survey and the likelihood of them saying “no” is pretty good.
Guns are likely to be a major issue in the 2020 campaign for a couple of reasons. President Donald Trump, while he hasn’t pleased everyone in the firearms community, has been filling federal court vacancies with conservative judges who presumably adhere to the Bill of Rights as inclusive of the Second Amendment. He has also named Associate Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.
Democrats want to stop Trump’s court balancing, which may turn out to be the president’s lasting and, in the eyes of embattled gun owners, greatest legacy.
Last October, Pew acknowledged that gun policy in this country “remains divisive, but several proposals still draw bipartisan support.”
Majorities want to prevent insane people from having guns, and they don’t want people on federal watch lists to be able to purchase firearms. There’s no indication from Pew whether the survey asked respondents about infringing on the rights of people whose names may be on a list but haven’t been charged with or convicted of any crime.
While Democrats are eager to push a gun control philosophy that appeals to the increasingly left-leaning base, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, writing at Fox News Wednesday, has an interesting take on the political situation now developing.
While President Trump has been “proving he was a world leader in Japan, Britain, France, Ireland and Mexico, (House Speaker Nancy) Pelosi’s House Democrats were ineffectually talking about subpoenas and investigations – and asserting that there is no border problem,” Gingrich wrote. “The stature gap just kept growing.
“Pelosi’s shrinking stature,” Gingrich observed, “is more than matched by the decay of the Democratic presidential field.”
He goes on to say that former Vice President Joe Biden, now running ahead of the pack, may not be there for the finish. Biden’s record “makes him vulnerable on issue after issue,” Gingrich said.
“Second,” Gingrich continued, “the dynamic, militant elements of the Democratic Party are all on the left. A recent uprising forced Biden to repudiate a decades-long commitment of support for the 1976 Hyde Amendment – which prevents taxpayer money from being used to pay for most abortions. After a few days of pressure, Biden caved to the left. A lifetime career of citing his Catholicism was washed away by the radical left in less than a week.”
And finally, the former House Speaker stated, “Biden has always been a weak, self-destructive candidate and he is still a weak, self-destructive candidate.”
If or when Biden is surpassed by one of the others, will that candidate be able to convince voters to turn back the clock toward higher taxes, more gun control, more expensive health care, or the notion of a president that is less a leader and more of an apologist for the United States?
That’s the question voters can start asking, and they have about 16 months to come up with an answer.
