By Dave Workman
Buried in a story appearing at the Cap Times, a Madison, Wisconsin-based news outlet, may be an inadvertent revelation about why Democrats—in Wisconsin and elsewhere—have lost all credibility when it comes to firearms and the Second Amendment.
The report quotes Democrat state Attorney General Josh Kaul, complaining about private gun sales between individuals, which is perfectly legal.
“Somebody can sell a gun out of the trunk of their car to a stranger right now,” Kaul tells the publication, “and there’s nothing that law enforcement can do if it’s a private sale, because those are not subjected to background checks.”
At this point, veteran gun rights activists and just about any gun owner who has seen his or her rights trampled on for years by lawmakers determined to make it appear they’re fighting crime, will respond with a loud, “Well, DUH! Criminals do that all the time even when existing law prohibits it. This is why they’re criminals. They don’t bother with the law.”
Yet Democrats like Kaul seem convinced ratcheting down on law-abiding citizens will somehow have an impact on criminals. The typical argument is, “Well, if it saves one life, it’s worth it.”
Gun control proponents are far less likely to use that same argument when a legally-armed citizen stops a crime in progress. When 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken fatally shot a would-be mass killer at the Greenwood Mall in Indiana more than two years ago, the gun control crowd was typically silent. Dicken was hailed as a hero by mall management, the local police chief and other officials. But his act of public defense left anti-gunners with lockjaw.
Dicken didn’t fit the narrative, and his heroic act reinforced the notion that armed citizens can fight back. The left doesn’t like that. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg brought charges against Daniel Penny for taking action against a dangerous man who was threatening to harm or kill people on a New York subway. There are now concerns this prosecution had a chilling effect on other people who stood by and watched while a woman was deliberately burned to death on a subway, according to the New York Post.
Back to the Cap Times story, another person quoted was Senate Democrat Leader Dianne Hesselbein. She—like so many other Democrats promoting gun control legislation—insisted, “We are not trying to remove weapons from law-abiding citizens. That is not what we’re all about. We’re just trying to make Wisconsin and our community safer.”
Where have we heard that before? Vice President Kamala Harris declared she did not want to take anyone’s firearms, and in the next breath she advocated for “mandatory buy-back” of so-called “assault weapons.” Mandatory buy-back translates to confiscation with compensation. So, yeah, say gun rights activists, Democrats really do want to take guns from law-abiding citizens, especially if those firearms look scary, are semi-automatic by design, accept magazines holding more than ten cartridges, and are not politically correct.
In the aftermath of the school shooting earlier this month in Madison, Wis., Democrat President Joe Biden—a career gun prohibitionist—released a statement in which he demanded, “Congress must pass commonsense gun safety laws: Universal background checks. A national red flag law. A ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
Biden’s “solutions” had absolutely nothing to do with the circumstances of the crime. The 15-year-old alleged shooter, a girl, was too young to have legally purchased any firearm, much less a handgun, so a background check would not have prevented the crime.
She used a handgun, not an “assault weapon” with a “high-capacity magazine,” so that demand from Biden also had no connection to reality, much less the crime.
Such reactions and recommendations from Democrats are why the party is considered tone-deaf and irrelevant where guns are involved. Their ideas are one-size-fits-all nonsense, reflective only of an agenda of public disarmament, which, of course, no Democrat will admit.
As legislative sessions loom on the horizon with the arrival of 2025, Democrats are proposing more gun restrictions in California, Oregon, Washington and other “blue” states. Their arguments reflect an obsession with guns rather than putting perpetrators behind bars. Instead of advocating punishment for habitual criminals, Democrats want to criminalize the private property of honest citizens, and turn those citizens into convicted criminals.
It is dishonest at best, and deplorable to its core. But it clearly defines why Democrats have lost credibility on guns, and why they will probably never get it back.
Workman is editor-in-chief of TheGunMag.com
