ANALYSIS
The billionaire-backed Everytown for Gun Safety anti-gun rights organization has tagged the Joe Biden-Kalama Harris Democrat team as “the strongest President and Vice President for gun safety in American history.”
Biden’s choice of the vehemently anti-gun California senator has cemented the former vice president’s political position as an avowed gun prohibitionist, picking a running mate who may be even more an enemy of the Second Amendment as he has been in four decades in Washington, D.C.
In an email blast Tuesday following the announcement, Everytown wrote, “In the last few years, we’ve witnessed the continued toll of American gun violence. In this country, 100 lives a day are cut short due to gun violence, hundreds more are wounded, and far too many families are left grieving. Horrific tragedies like the devastating mass shootings in Las Vegas, NV in 2017, Parkland, FL in 2018, and El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH last year left the entire country grieving. Daily gun violence in communities across the country worsens. And yet, we are all still left waiting for the real change we need to end gun violence.”
Translation: It is the most radical gun control ticket since Obama-Biden and Clinton-Kaine.
Unlike other news agencies currently building up Biden’s pick—as is the New York Times, or running a puff piece on Harris, as is the Washington Post—Fox News is telling the “other side” of the Harris story. According to Fox, Harris promoted a bail fund group that helped get Minnesota protesters out of jail after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.
For liberals, it’s all about image rather than history, critics are suggesting. Harris is being described as a “pragmatic moderate” by the New York Times, when she is actually far left, according to the National Review. Her record as state attorney general in California will be under intense scrutiny.
According to the National Review article, “Senator Harris is a moderate autocrat. During the Democratic primary debates, she vowed to ban so-called assault weapons by executive order. When Joe Biden pointed out that the president has no such power and is obliged to follow the Constitution, she laughed in his face. As attorney general in California, she abused her investigatory and prosecutorial powers to harass conservative-leaning policy groups and was part of an alliance of Democratic attorneys general that tried to make a crime out of “climate denial,” effectively seeking to criminalize dissent by pretending that it amounts to securities fraud, of all things. She seeks to incarcerate the parents of truant children, and in California worked overtime to uphold unjust convictions obtained through official misconduct and the fabrication of evidence.”
CBS News is reporting, “Harris, a former prosecutor, has established a voting record as one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate, according to GovTrack, an independent nonpartisan website that tracks legislative records.” The CBS profile noted, “Harris has been a staunch advocate of stricter gun control laws. Harris supports requiring anyone who sells more than five guns a year to conduct background checks.”
By adding Harris, Biden doesn’t seem to really gain anything. He’ll already get California, so the “favorite daughter” element is a non-starter. Harris’ record as a prosecutor and attorney general in the Golden State doesn’t really put her in the “Plus column” among many on the Left.
Because she would be a heartbeat away from the presidency, her selection as running mate could bring more gun owners to the polls in November, and it will not be about race, but about voting history and policy.
Biden-Harris is not a “gun safety” team. It’s a gun confiscation team, say rights activists, and they will be repeating that all the way to Nov. 3.
