SAF Preps for Battle as Dems Mask Failures by Scapegoating Guns

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Democrats unable to deal with the sudden crime increases in major cities are falling back on their favorite scapegoats—guns and Second Amendment rights—to mask their party’s failures, according to Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump, in a blistering interview with Fox News.

As Conway was speaking, major gun rights organizations were reacting to language in a draft of the Democrat 2020 political platform targeting guns and the citizens who own them.

While the National Rifle Association declared Democrats want to “turn the right to keep and bear arms into a privilege dependent on the whim of government bureaucrats,” the Second Amendment Foundation has gone a step further by launching a massive fund-raising effort in anticipation of multiple legal battles.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb told Ammoland News his email alert has already gone to some 320,000 people and he hopes to reach 1 million members and potential supporters. He said the fund-raiser is aimed at educating gun owners “about this catastrophic threat to their gun rights.” He is making no secret about his intent. SAF, he explained needs to “have the funds on hand to file a slew of lawsuits to stop our Bill of Rights from being shredded.”

Meanwhile, Conway, a key figure in the Trump White House, ripped Democrat mayors in several cities for blaming guns for upticks in urban violence, during an interview with Fox News’ Julie Banderas.

Conway was reacting to remarks by anti-gun Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), who blamed weak gun control laws and the COVID-19 outbreak for spikes in violence in New York, Chicago and elsewhere. Duckworth called for legislation to “close the gun show loophole” and require so-called “universal background checks,” two favorite demands of the far left. Yet, research suggests that criminals don’t buy their firearms at gun shows, nor at retail gun stores where they would go through background checks.

By no small coincidence, Fox News reported a 268 percent spike in robberies in New York City’s Upper East Side, which reportedly is home to several wealthy elitists. At least five of those robberies were at gunpoint.

WNYW, a Fox affiliate in New York City, reported a 177 percent increase in shootings last month over July 2019. Through the first seven months of this year, shootings in the city are up 72 percent over the first seven months of last year. Democrats want to spin the uptick in violence as the reason they need to crack down on the gun rights of law-abiding citizens.

Conway’s interview could not have been better timed. Literally while she was talking, the NRA and SAF were reacting to the Democrat party gun control platform draft.

Gun rights groups agreed the platform essentially “declares war” on the right to keep and bear arms. Pulled from Page 43 of their draft plan is this language:

“Democrats will enact universal background checks, end online sales of guns and ammunition, close dangerous loopholes that currently allow stalkers and some individuals convicted of assault or battery to buy and possess firearms, and adequately fund the federal background check system. We will close the ‘Charleston loophole’ and prevent individuals who have been convicted of hate crimes from possessing firearms. Democrats will ban the manufacture and sale of assault weapons and high capacity magazines. We will incentivize states to enact licensing requirements for owning firearms and “red flag” laws that allow courts to temporarily remove guns from the possession of those who are a danger to themselves or others. We will pass legislation requiring that guns be safely stored in homes. And Democrats believe that gun companies should be held responsible for their products, just like any other business, and will prioritize repealing the law that shields gun manufacturers from civil liability.”

SAF’s Gottlieb zeroed in on this paragraph in his fundraising letter.

“Make no mistake about it, if Joe Biden wins in November and the Democrats get control of the U.S. Senate this will be the new reality,” he warned. “And believe me, this is just the beginning of the gun prohibition movement’s agenda to finally destroy our Second Amendment rights.”

In recent years, SAF has become a legal powerhouse, filing lawsuits all over the map challenging state and local gun control laws and regulations. What made this possible was the 2010 Supreme Court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago, a landmark case brought by SAF and the Illinois State Rifle Association. The ruling incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment, thus putting a number of local gun laws on a collision course with the Bill of Rights.

During her interview, Conway offered a blunt observation about the Democrats’ blame game attempt to shift public attention to firearms, and away from her party’s ineptitude, if not incompetence, in dealing with the upswing in violence.

“What is the evidence,” she asked, “that people who are shooting in these cities got their firearms legally, let alone at a gun show and through a loophole? They (Democrats) try to cloud the whole conversation with nonsense…”

So far as gun rights activists are concerned, “nonsense” accurately sums up the Democrats’ open war on firearms. No other right protected by the Constitution is as regulated by the government or reviled by the Far Left.

Gottlieb, while hoping for the best in November, is planning for the worst. He has the example set by gun-hating Democrats in Virginia earlier this year as motivation.

“We can’t wait for the election results,” Gottlieb says in his letter to supporters. “By then it will be too late. The gun confiscation movement funded by billionaires like Michael Bloomberg and George Soros will already be in full control of our government. In record time they will transform our right to keep and bears arms into gun ban and confiscation laws like exist in England, New Zealand, Cuba, and Venezuela.

“Once our rights are lost we won’t get them back,” he states. “The time to act is now.”

 

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About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.