Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
During Friday night’s Democratic presidential campaign debate, Elizabeth Warren gave gun owners a stark reminder of just how important the 2020 election will be for our right to keep and bear arms when she said that, if elected, she would nuke the filibuster rule in the Senate in order to ram through gun control bills. From NPR:
When discussing gun control efforts, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren brought up her willingness to scrap the legislative filibuster, especially on an issue like universal background checks, which polls show has the support of a clear majority of Americans. The filibuster creates a hurdle in the Senate that makes it more difficult to passlegislation.
Warren is one of three Democratic candidates on the record backing the end of the filibuster, along with Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., and billionaire activist TomSteyer.
Buttigieg was then asked about expanding the Supreme Court. He’s called for increasing the number of justices to 15, with five of those being “apolitical justices picked by the first 10.” Today the Supreme Court has nine members but the Constitution doesn’t specify how many justices it may include.
Warren, Steyer and entrepreneur Andrew Yang have also expressed support for increasing the size of the court.
It’s crazy to me that Warren would choose universal background checks as her legislative excuse to nuke filibuster, given the fact that even the Obama-era Justice Department acknowledged that a universal background check law would be almost impossible to enforce without a federal gun registration requirement. Of course Warren wants a federal gun registry as well, though she didn’t bring that up during Friday night’s debate.
As concerning as Warren and Buttigieg’s comments about scrapping the filibuster may be, it’s their support for packing the Supreme Court with anti-gun justices that would be even more dangerous to our civil liberties. If Warren had her way, her court packing scheme would lead to the the overturning or gutting of the Heller decision, allowing for virtually any gun control law to pass constitutional muster with the high court.
The 2020 election isn’t just about who will be in the White House for the next four years. It’s about whether or not our Second Amendment rights will be protected or even recognized in the decades ahead. Anti-gun Democrats like Warren have made it clear that if elected, they will target legal gun owners, not violent criminals, in their quest to “end gun violence.” It’s up to Second Amendment supporters to get involved and engaged this election cycle and back candidates who will ensure our right to keep and bear arms remains intact.
Cam Edwards has covered the 2nd Amendment for more than 15 years as a broadcast and online journalist, as well as the co-author of "Heavy Lifting: Grow Up, Get a Job, Start a Family, and Other Manly Advice" with Jim Geraghty. He lives outside of Farmville, Virginia with his family. https://bearingarms.com/author/camedwards/
https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/02/08/warren-filibuster-gun-control/