Representative Lauren Boebert has done an excellent job branding herself as a hard-right, down-to-Earth MAGA mom.
Boebert’s favorite accessory, to complete the look is a gun.
Lauren Boebert Loves Her Guns
Boebert is often seen carrying a sidearm. It makes sense.
A principle tenet of Boebert’s political identity is her staunch pro-gun stance.
Boebert even opened a gun-themed restaurant, before she was a Congresswoman, named Shooter’s Grill. Back in March, Boebert said that “The Second Amendment is absolute and it’s here to stay. A recent report states that Americans own 46 percent of the world’s guns. I think we need to get our numbers up, boys and girls.”
Lauren Boebert, who is a special kind of stupid, was citing a study that Aaron Karp authored. Karp found that “the biggest force pushing up gun ownership around the world is civilian ownership in the United States. Ordinary American people buy approximately 14 million new and imported guns every year.”
Americans of course only represent four percent of the global population.
Boebert’s comments came while criticizing the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) for requiring gun owners to register firearms with pistol braces.
“ATF Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms,” Boebert said. “In western Colorado, we call that a fun weekend. But DC bureaucrats have used this agency to infringe on the rights of the American people.” Boebert elaborated: “We don’t trust the ATF because of their overreaching actions, exactly like we are seeing with this rule.”
The Boebert Brand
Boebert claims that she obtained a concealed carry permit – and encouraged her restaurant servers to do the same – after a man was “beaten to death by another man’s hands…outside of [her] restaurant.”
Yeah, that never happened.
What did happen was a man who had been involved in a fight somewhere in the vicinity of Boebert’s restaurant collapsed a block away from the restaurant and died from a methamphetamine overdose. The shooting death story sells better though – and offers a better segue into why Lauren Boebert is pro-Second Amendment and carries a gun around. It doesn’t help to explain why Boebert opened a gun-themed restaurant before the incident occurred.
Anyways, I can appreciate someone wanting to exercise their rights under the Second Amendment.
Most gun owners are responsible gun owners – and as far as I know, Boebert is a responsible gun owner.
But there’s something distasteful about making guns so foundational to your identity, whether for a political or personal brand. And there’s something distasteful about fear-mongering, which is a tactic the pro-gun crowd indulges in regularly.
The simple fact is guns will always be a facet of American life, if for no other reason than the practical impossibility of recovering the bajillion guns that Americans currently own (46 percent of every gun owned on Earth, apparently). Boebert derives a lot of power from right-wing fears that liberals are coming to take Americans guns away; Boebert amplifies that fear. But it’s misplaced fear. Practically speaking, guns are unrecoverable.
What’s also frustrating about Boebert’s stance is the categorical opposition to any sort of firearm regulation. There’s nothing in the Second Amendment about the right to extended magazines or bump stocks or pistol braces. And refusing to acknowledge that America does have a problem with gun violence and that maybe advanced weaponry in the hands of everyday citizens is not consistent with society’s overall well-being, is a frustrating tenet of the portion of the American population for whom Boebert speaks.
Harrison Kass is the Senior Editor at 19FortyFive. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.
From 19FortyFive
