No one is particularly shocked that the media is completely enamored with Vice President Kamala Harris. To put it bluntly, she’s just not Donald Trump, which is reason enough for them.
As a result, they’re not all that interested in providing a whole lot of nuance in discussing her campaign–a campaign that’s short of concrete policy proposals or media interviews where she answers questions.
Despite that, she’s pushing an idea that folks at the New York Times find downright intriguing. She’s using the word freedom a lot, all while pushing things that will restrict actual freedom.
When President Bill Clinton asked House Democrats to pass an assault weapons ban in 1994, their leaders begged him to back off, fearing the vote would cost them their seats. They were right. Democrats lost the House for the first time in 40 years, blamed the assault weapons ban and let it expire. They have struggled ever since to figure out a winning gun safety message.
Now comes Vice President Kamala Harris, who is talking about guns in a new way for a Democrat — by co-opting the language of Republicans.
She has promised Americans “the freedom to be safe from gun violence,” including in her first campaign ad, and told Oprah Winfrey that she owned a gun and that if someone breaks into her home, “they’re getting shot.” In doing so, Ms. Harris has upended Democratic stereotypes and reframed the conversation around guns — even as she vows to reinstate the lapsed ban, a long-sought goal of many in the party.
“It is a false choice to suggest you are either in favor of the Second Amendment or you want to take everyone’s guns away,” Ms. Harris declared last month at a White House ceremony in which President Biden signed two executive orders related to gun safety. “I am in favor of the Second Amendment, and I believe we need to reinstate the assault weapons ban.”
It’s not a false choice and while we may hate it, there’s absolutely no “freedom to be safe” from anything.
There can’t be simply because absolute safety does not exist.
She’s using the word “freedom” and trusting that the media will fawn over the idea, push it onto the American people, and then try to reframe pro-gun voices as somehow being opposed to freedom.
However, there are questions the Times simply isn’t asking.
For one, is there anything else people have a right to be safe from? If so, what? Why not a right to be safe from everything?
Moreover, how can you provide perfect safety?
As it stands, the rights protected by the Bill of Rights don’t require government action. They actually mandate government inaction. In other words, all they have to do to protect those rights is to do nothing.
She’s talking about restricting a particular category of firearms–the one best suited for taking on a tyrannical government of our current options–and pretends it’s about keeping people safe.
Yet if we accept this idea of safety, that itself opens the door to tyranny.
After all, she’s harping on so-called assault weapons, but handguns are used in far more instances of so-called gun violence. Is she going to come up later and reiterate her previous support for a handgun ban? After all, if keeping people safe from “gun violence” is the goal, where will the line in the sand be? At what point will enough be enough?
And how do you preserve that supposed right when guns start flowing into the United States? If we can’t stop the flow of illegal drugs or illegal immigrants, then how would we stop the flow of illegal guns? Just because it supposedly goes one direction now doesn’t mean it won’t flip once there’s profit for the cartels.
Let’s also not pretend that it will stop with a “right to be safe from gun violence,” either.
No, in time someone will figure that the right to be safe is sufficient enough to start telling people how to live their lives in almost every aspect. They’ll tell us what to eat, where we can live, what we can do, and so many other things that any illusion of freedom will be gone.
So no, I’m not buying this and I’ll push back on this idea of “right to be safe” until the day I die.
