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October 04, 2024
By David Codrea
“At VP debate a star is born and Trump is vindicated,” former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich gushed in a Fox News postmortem. “Vance Delivers a Master Class in How to Deal with Biased Moderators,” The Daily Signal echoed.
I don’t see it that way, at least for when the conversation turned to the Second Amendment. JD Vance’s acceptance of prohibitionist terms, his failure to correct egregious errors and outright lies, and his avoidance of elaborating to voters on why the right to keep and bear arms is the keystone of freedom, show that when it comes to effective advocacy, Republican politicians all too often come up short.
The first blown opportunity arose when the subject of abortion was raised and Tim Walz complained that under a Trump administration, “the states will decide what's right for Texas might not be right for Washington. That's not how this works. This is basic human right.”
The right to arms and to defend life and liberty are basic human rights as well, and for that, former President Barack Obama, addressing handgun bans overturned in the Heller decision, said “What works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.” Disregarding for a moment that the ban hardly “worked” in Chicago, it points to Democrat hypocrisy when they cry “home rule” to impose municipal infringements disallowed by state preemption laws but then turn around and demand nationwide citizen disarmament edicts.
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When the subject turned to “America’s gun violence, epidemic” rather than calling out CBS News moderators Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan for using a loaded and pejorative term, Vance repeatedly used it himself. The truth of course, as economist John Lott has demonstrated, is “Murder isn’t a nationwide problem. It’s a problem in a small set of urban areas, and even in those counties, murders are concentrated in small areas inside them,” meaning there is no justification for blanket citizen disarmament “laws.”
And he let O’Donnell’s assertion that “the leading cause of death for children and teens in America is by firearms” without challenge. Again, per Lott, “What is a child?... These deaths are largely gang-related, and even banning guns is unlikely to stop drug gangs from obtaining guns…”
Vance did not respond to O’Donnell’s loaded statement that he opposes “red flag gun laws and legislation to ban certain semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s,” with a persuasive explanation of why due process means you can’t punish before you convict, how gun prohibitions don’t stop dangerous criminals from obtaining them, and how removing guns but not criminals leave society at risk from proven threats. He chose not to explain why the Second Amendment mandates “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” and to educate on what “arms” are and why the Framers thought it important for the citizenry to be capable to respond to trained and equipped military threats. Instead, he tried to sound conciliatory to holding parents responsible for criminal actions of their children, saying “I certainly trust local law enforcement and local authorities to make those decisions.”
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Really? In deep blue Seattle and San Francisco? From Chicago to Cheyenne?
He also continued with the language of the left decrying “illegal guns,” which, rather than meaning “stolen” has been expanded to include types of firearms the government doesn’t want to allow you to have, and to fraudulently “legitimize” a non-Constitutional power of government to approve or disapprove transfers.
And when addressing “gun free school zones” (that act as predator empowerment zones), Vance elected to ignore programs like Faculty/Administrator Safety Training & Emergency Response (FASTER), and the proven superior safety record of schools where trained teachers and staffers who choose to be are armed. To Walz and Kamala Harris, choice only applies when there’s a defenseless life to be terminated.
Vance also could have pointed out that “before the 1990 Gun-Free School Zones Act (GFSA), only two notable mass shootings had occurred on school campuses and targeted school attacks increased by over 384% following the enactment of the GFSA” (Ammo.com). And he could have asked Walz what he meant when he said, “I've become friends with school shooters.”
When it was his turn to address the issue, Walz reverted to the litany of lies he and Harris have been parroting on the campaign trail, and Vance let a slew of them go unchallenged.
“I'm a hunter. I own firearms,” Walz argued. “The Vice President is. We understand that the Second Amendment is there, but our first responsibility is to our kids to figure this out.”
Their first responsibility is to their oath to the Constitution. If they keep that and stop infringing on the rights of citizens in whose care children are entrusted, plenty more will be figured out.
Walz pressed on, lauding due process-denying “enhanced red flag laws,” and registration-enabling “enhanced background checks” that the “law-abiding” obey and dangerous criminals ignore. (No less a source than the National Institute of Justice has concluded “Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…”)
He repeated the ubiquitous bald-faced lie that “we've got folks that won't allow research to be even done on gun violence.”
That’s not true and Vance could have responded with what is. The Centers for Disease Control was acting as a gun prohibitionist advocacy group and Congress didn’t defund research, it forbade using tax dollars to promote agenda-driven “junk science” that had the predetermined goal of advancing “gun control.”
“I've spent time in Finland and seen some Finnish schools,” Walz went on. “They don't have this happen even though they have a high gun ownership rate in the country. There are reasonable things that we can do to make a difference. It's not infringing on your Second Amendment. And the idea to have some of these weapons out there. It just doesn't make any sense.”
Vance could have replied that handguns, shotguns, and rifles, including semiautomatics (AR-15-type rifles and semi-auto military-style rifles) are commonly sold to civilians in Finland with a license. He and Harris are talking about banning them. And it’s not the licenses that make Finland more peaceable—the four million or so peaceable NRA members, arguable the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet, don’t need licenses to keep their behavior in check. See John Lott’s conclusions, above.
“No one's trying to scaremonger and say, we're taking your guns,” Walz continued. “You can still keep your firearms, and we can make a difference.”
But you can’t keep your firearms, Vance could have countered. Democrats want to ban semiautomatics. Red flag laws will disarm citizens who haven’t even been charged with a crime, let alone convicted. Harris was on record as a San Francisco District Attorney arguing against the Second Amendment being an individual right, calling for a handgun ban, and threatening official home invasions to enforce guns being kept locked up and useless against “unofficial” ones.
Speaking of guns, she claims to have one but won’t admit what kind, possibly because if it’s a semiauto, it is functionally no different than the rifles she wants to mandatorily “buy back” or just outlaw and seize, and handguns are used in far more homicides than so-called (on purpose) “assault weapons.”.
“I was the NRA guy for a long time. They used to teach gun safety,” Walz continued, not explaining what it was he promised the NRA in order to get its endorsement before betraying the gun owners who believed him. “I'm of an age where my shotgun was in my car so I could pheasant hunt after football practice.”
The Second Amendment isn’t about pheasant hunting.
But he admitted it’s not the guns. He could have one on a school campus and the kids would be perfectly safe. So, naturally, he followed that up with “Sometimes it just is the guns. It's just the guns.”
“I think there's a capacity to find solutions on this that work, protect Second Amendment, protect our children,” he concluded.
Right. Protect “shall not be infringed” by infringing.” And Vance let him get away with it.
Our leaders must do better. We need them to lead, and we need them to teach, because while gun rights advocates can reach niche audiences, our representatives have the potential to educate those outside the echo chambers with something they won’t get from regime media: the truth.
Sources About the Author David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News , he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts onTwitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, we’d love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com .
