Vice President Kamala Harris took her gun control message to Chicago Friday. She has become what many are calling a bit of an attack dog for the Biden administration’s push to ban semi-automatic rifles.
“I believe in the Second Amendment, but I also believe we need to renew the assault weapons ban. We need red flag laws. We need universal background checks,” Harris said. “It is reasonable to say that a weapon of war, a weapon that was literally designed to kill a lot of human beings quickly.”
Her talking points show a disconnect from reality.
Kamala Harris Talking Points Out of Touch With Reality
She has attempted to define AR-15s as a weapon of war even though not a single country uses them in combat.
Rhetoric about “assault weapons” ignores that many hunting rifles are much more powerful than the AR-15.
The 1994 Assault Weapons Ban targeted weapons based on how they looked. Automatic weapons have generally been restricted from popular use since the 1934 National Firearms Control Act. Chicago has had tough gun-control laws since the 1980s.
The assault weapons issue is good for political activism; however, banning such rifles would have a very small impact on gun deaths.
Nationally, 6,012 homicides were committed with pistols nationwide compared with 447 using rifles of various unknown types in 2021.
Most of the homicides and gun crimes in Chicago are committed with pistols, not with so-called “assault weapons.”
The same is true when it comes to background checks. Such checks would do little to stop gun crimes in Chicago.
Chicago is well-known for its continuous gang warfare and gun homicides. In 2020, 3,261 people were wounded in shootings in Chicago, according to the gun control activist group One Aim Illinois. Guns accounted for 93.1% of all homicides in Chicago.
“According to gun trace data, a significant number of firearms recovered in Chicago originate outside Chicago and are illegally trafficked into the city. The strike force has strengthened coordination between law enforcement in Chicago and counterparts in the locations where many of the firearms originate. In providing the update on the strike force’s efforts, U.S. Attorney Lausch was joined by U.S. Attorneys from around the Midwest,” a brief posted on the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois notes.
Six-in-10 guns trafficked in Chicago originated from out of state, according to a 2017 report.
Kamala Harris Proposes Making Manufacturers Liable
“I think it is also reasonable, as a former prosecutor, to say that it is reasonable to say that the — the gun manufacturers should not have immunity from litigation,” Kamala Harris said.
Critics say this suggestion would be a backdoor way of crushing the gun industry and undermining the Second Amendment.
“He wants to drive us out of business,” Mark Oliva, the director of public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade group, said of the Biden-Harris strategy. “So it’s a very scary proposition, and we take it very seriously.”
Gun control advocates see this suggestion as a way of destroying the industry.
“The protections are unique in that they are defending the industry from the intended use of their product,” said David Pucino, senior staff attorney at the Giffords Law Center, which promotes gun control. “The industry knows that if the victims got their fair day in court, the industry would lose.”
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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