Lauren Boebert assailed for bill to make the AR-15 the “national gun” of the United States.
What Did Lauren Boebert Say This Time?
One constituent has ripped Boebert for the bill she cosponsored to make the AR-15 the “national gun” of the country.
Lauren Boebert has been all about guns for the entirety of her political career.
She even formerly owned a gun-themed restaurant in Colorado called Shooters Grill, and has posed with her family carrying guns for a Christmas card photo.
Boebert took things even further earlier this year, with her cosponsorship of a piece of legislation in Congress called the National Gun Act.
Co-sponsored by Boebert, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Rep. George Santos (R-NY), Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) and Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA), the bill “declares an AR-15 style rifle chambered in a .223 Remington round or a 5.56x45mm NATO round to be the National Gun of the United States.”
Moore announced the introduction of the legislation at a gun store in his Alabama district.
“The anti-Second Amendment group won’t stop until they take away all your firearms,” Moore said at the time. “One rule to remember: any government that would take away one right would take away them all.”
Why Do This?
The bill was introduced in the House in February and referred to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, although it hasn’t moved any further, and there’s no indication that the bill has been treated as a priority by the House Republican leadership.
And even if it did, the bill has zero chance of becoming law during the Biden presidency.
Moore went on to state that “we must send a message that we will meet every attack on any of our constitutional rights,” seemingly defending “attack” as times when AR-15s have been criticized after mass shooting events.
Trolling?
It would appear to be a messaging bill, or possibly a trolling one, aimed at stoking outrage from those who say critical things about the AR-15, on the many occasions when that type of gun is used in a mass shooting. It’s not clear what special status would be conferred on the AR-15 if it were to become the “national gun,” or why that in particular, as opposed to any other kind, would deserve that status.
The president has proposed the return of the assault weapons ban, but it doesn’t appear such legislation has any traction, and could not possibly pass with a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. But whether or not the AR-15 has been declared the “National Gun” would appear to have no bearing on that.
If the bill was meant as an attention-seeking measure, it didn’t succeed at doing so, as it’s barely made news in the months since, which has coincided with an uncommonly large number of mass shootings around the country. Most media accounts of the introduction of the bill focused on its cosponsorship by Santos, who has since been indicted on seven counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, one count of theft of public funds, and two counts of making materially false statements to the House of Representatives.
But this week, a constituent of Boebert’s slammed her for the bill.
“Is this a cruel joke?,” Andy Wiessner wrote in a letter to the Denver Post. “The AR-15 assault rifle Boebert wants to make our ‘National Gun’ is a weapon of war. Its bullets are designed to tear human flesh to pieces by “yawing”, tumbling or fragmenting in the body, thereby causing maximum internal bleeding and tissue damage. I am a Vietnam War vet, and the M-16s we carried there were an offshoot of the AR-15.”
Boebert, who won the closest House race in the country in 2022, is facing another challenge from the same Democrat, Adam Frisch, in 2024.
Frisch outraised Boebert in the first quarter of this year, and the race promises to be one of the most closely watched in the country in the 2024 cycle.
MORE: Could Donald Trump Be Disqualified from Becoming President Again?
MORE: Could Donald Trump Quit the GOP?
Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
