Anti-gun Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi picked a favorite target of her party – the rights of gun owners – in her spat du jour with President Donald Trump over his declaration of a national emergency to secure additional border wall funding by suggesting that a future Democratic president could declare an emergency to deal with so-called “gun violence,” which translates to executive gun control action.
Democrats have become “the party of gun control,” and they are not happy that Trump has been filling federal court vacancies with judges who may have more fidelity the Second Amendment and has placed two “originalist” justices on the Supreme Court. They are even less happy that the president is adamant about fulfilling a campaign promise to build a wall along the southern border.
Into this fray, perhaps not surprisingly, has jumped anti-gun Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, threatening yet another lawsuit against the administration. According to the Seattle P-I.com, he’s already sued the president 33 times, solidifying his position with his far left Seattle voter base. But some Washington state residents are wondering how he can spend their money on purely partisan political legal actions.
Pelosi’s remark came during a press conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, according to Fox News. It was the one-year anniversary of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, and Pelosi grabbed at the opportunity to shift the discussion from border security to gun control.
“Let’s talk about today,” she told reporters. “The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America. That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would. But a Democratic president can do that.”
But is there an “epidemic of gun violence?” According to the FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2017 the number of firearm-related homicides climbed in 2015 and 2016, but dropped in 2017, the latest year for which complete data is available. In Chicago, which might be a bellwether for so-called “gun violence,” homicides dropped last year for the second year in a row.
Writing at Ammoland, nationally-syndicated radio host Mark Walters at Armed American Radio suggested Friday that Pelosi was signaling something sinister for gun owners.
“In one bold, profound statement,” Walters wrote, “(the) current speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, second in line to the White House after the vice-president in order of succession, finally said what we all know she and the rest of the Democrats have in store for us when (inevitably) another Democrat is elected President. In case you still have trouble understanding, let me make it clear for you. Nancy Pelosi has just made it clear, in no uncertain terms, that her party is willing to abolish the Second Amendment with the stroke of a pen via executive fiat and when the next Democrat is (inevitably) elected, they intend to do so.”
Many might balk at Walters’ scenario, but 20 years ago, nobody ever envisioned that billionaire-backed gun prohibitionists would render Washington State’s gun laws into what amounts to a frontal assault on the Second Amendment and Article 1, Section 24 of the State Constitution. The notion that “It can’t happen here” has gone the way of the dodo.
And now Speaker Pelosi is using the threat of possible sanctions against 100 million citizens whose only offense is that they exercise an enumerated constitutional right, simply because she is having a snit over the president’s gamesmanship involving an issue that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment. But that tenet of the Bill of Rights has become something of a whipping boy for Democrats in their incremental creep to the far left.
