While Bernie Sanders was responsible for moving the Democratic Party far to the left during the 2016 primaries, there was one issue where he was not quite as progressive as Hillary Clinton: The subject of gun control.
Sanders, who hails from Vermont, where the Second Amendment is still taken seriously amid their love for so-called democratic socialism, was consistently fighting from behind on the issue of guns, struggling to keep up with Hillary’s “ban ‘em all” philosophy. Well, Sanders has apparently decided that was a weak point in his first candidacy, and he’s out to prove that he can destroy the Second Amendment as well as any other Democrat in the field.
Sanders was enamored with New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s announcement that, in the wake of the Christchurch mosque shooting, her country would no longer allow semi-automatic, military-style rifles on the streets.
“Today I am announcing that New Zealand will ban all military-style semi-automatic weapons. We will also ban all assault rifles. We will also ban all high capacity magazines,” she said. “We will ban all parts with the ability to convert semi-automatic or any other type of firearm into a military style semi-automatic weapon.”
That’s a lot of banning.
The announcement was predictable, as was the immediate chorus of approval coming from American Democrats who have been trying to use mass shootings as an excuse to ban AR-15s for years. Less predictable, but just as dismal, was Sanders’ response. Apparently he’s given up on any notion of being the Second Amendment-supporting adult in the room.
“This is what real action to stop gun violence looks like,” he wrote. “We must follow New Zealand’s lead, take on the NRA and ban the sale and distribution of assault weapons in the United States.”
Just to say it all again, such a ban would not stop a single mass shooting. It would, however, prevent millions of Americans from exercising their full constitutional freedoms, from protecting their families and homes in the manner they deem fit, and it would succeed in making criminals out of law-abiding citizens.
President Trump said at the State of the Union address this year that America would “never” become a socialist country. That’s easy enough to believe…if the population remains armed and ready for the kind of totalitarian takeover that inevitably accompanies a lurch towards socialism/communism. But if we are disarmed, we are veritably helpless in the face of tyranny. This was the warning our Founding Fathers understood, and this forms the backbone of the Second Amendment’s inclusion in the Constitution. Don’t think for a minute, after all, that the Democrats would stop at “assault weapons.”
When you get right down to it, after all, what gun isn’t a “weapon of war”?
