Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz used to be a gun rights-favoring Democrat.
The key phrase there is “used to be.”
He took the NRA’s money and endorsement, then turned his back on them when it became politically expedient. To say the NRA is miffed about that is a bit of an understatement. Yet they didn’t make a huge thing about it outside of Minnesota because, well, who cares? He’s Minnesota’s governor.
But now he’s the vice presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, and he’s poised to potentially become everyone’s problem, so it seems the NRA isn’t interested in letting up on pointing out his flip-flopping history.
Randy Kozuch, chair of the NRA Political Victory Fund, said Gov. Tim Walz “is a political chameleon — changing his positions to further his own personal agenda,” referencing Walz’s evolving stance on gun control.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee was formerly an NRA-endorsed candidate running for statewide office in Minnesota in 2017. He earned an “A” rating from the NRA, and would often highlight those bona fides with a camp hat emblazoned with “NRA ENDORSED,” reported The Washington Post.
Walz supported a handful of bills considered favorable by gun enthusiasts and was named one of the top 20 politicians for gun owners by Guns & Ammo magazine in 2016.
“He tried to find a middle ground, saying he was a strong advocate but also supported common-sense regulation,” said Rob Doar, senior vice president of the nonprofit Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.
The issue with the middle ground on the gun issue is that it doesn’t really exist.
Oh, I know a lot of people think it does and think they’re standing on it, but they’re wrong. The reason I say that is because we all know that gun control advocates never declare, “That’s enough. We’re done now.” There’s always one step more. There’s always some other “commonsense gun law” that absolutely needs to be passed despite all the previous ones doing nothing.
So the line shifts. The supposed middle ground shifts. The players shift with it.
If Walz had decided that maybe universal background checks were a good idea but that was it, it would have been bad enough. However, he went beyond that. He’s openly advocating for an assault weapon ban. That’s a big problem because of what they’re considering “assault weapons” these days. He’s favoring a lot of other anti-gun measures and he’s not the least bit upset that the gun rights side loathes him.
He’s said he “sleeps just fine,” which means he’s unbothered by his former allies criticizing him. That’s likely because he was never in alignment with them in the first place. He just took what stands he needed to take in order to get elected.
We’ve seen this before. A candidate is pro-gun because they represent a pro-gun region in Congress, even if they’re from an anti-gun state like Minnesota. Then, when they want to move to statewide office, they’re suddenly anti-gun. Walz was just able to frame it as a reaction to things like the Las Vegas shooting so it didn’t look like a flip.
It was.
As such, no one who values the right to keep and bear arms is going to give him a pass on it.
