Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
No one is going to mistake House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as pro-gun anytime soon. The Democrat has long been an opponent of the right to keep and bear arms. The only reason she hasn’t pushed for more anti-gun legislation in her career is that she knew she couldn’t get it through no matter how much she wanted it.
However, in her tenure as speaker this time around, she deserves a bit of credit. See, she made a very pro-gun move. I don’t think she meant to be pro-gun, but she did, and it’s worked out well enough for us.
How did she do that? Well, like this:
Alittle-noticed casualty of Democrats’ impeachment push against President Donald Trump last year was gun control, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., says.
In an interview for my book, “Abuse of Power: Inside the Three-Year Campaign to Impeach Donald Trump,” Massie noted that the president was ready to pull the trigger on a federal law allowing orders to disallow possession of a gun because of extreme risk, commonly known as a “red flag law.”
“I’ve told my colleagues, the one good thing to come out of impeachment is that it knocked gun control in the head,” Massie said.
The impeachment was nearly certain to fail in the Senate. But, Massie said, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was up against progressives’ strong demand for impeaching Trump, and she faced the “choice of getting a major policy achievement for her side or jeopardizing her speakership.”
F0r what it’s worth, though, Massie is right. Pelosi pushing for impeachment pretty much scuttled gun control efforts that appeared to be all but a done deal.
The Democrats in the House wanted it. President Trump signaled his willingness to sign it. Republicans in the Senate were ready to defer to the president. All the stars had aligned. We were going to get gun control.
Then Pelosi went after impeachment.
At that point, Trump no longer had any reason to work with Democrats. Republicans in the Senate were now free to oppose the bills and let them die from inattention. Gun control was no longer going to happen because the parties weren’t interested in doing anything.
Especially since every Democrat had to know that impeachment wasn’t going to go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Senate.
Pelosi caved to the more extreme elements of her party and the net result was nothing. Most Americans don’t even think about impeachment anymore. Sure, they might remember it happened if someone brings it up, but they don’t consider it on a day-to-day basis. Meanwhile, a national-level red flag law would have played on everyone’s minds as reports surfaced of just how many times it had been used.
That’s not likely to work out well for them come November.
I, for one, have to thank Pelosi for that. Her plan yielded Democrats absolutely nothing, but especially no gun control, something the party has campaigned on for ages to some degree or another.
Her self-preservation instincts worked out well for the pro-Second Amendment side.
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He's also the host of Unloaded TV on YouTube. https://bearingarms.com/author/tomknighton/
https://bearingarms.com/tom-k/2020/09/21/nancy-pelosis-pro-gun-move/