Since a would-be assassin tried to kill Donald Trump, we were wondering how quickly the Democrats would pivot to gun control. We have our answer: Monday morning’s congressional hearing barely got underway when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) attributed the near-assassination of a former president to Congress’s failure to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.
Raskin, who hasn’t found an opportunity to grandstand that he couldn’t resist, acknowledged that the Secret Service failed Trump, but he attributed just as much blame to a lack of gun control legislation. He spoke for four minutes about “mass shootings” and how banning “weapons of war” could have stopped them.
“We can't let ourselves off the hook, either, dear colleagues,” he began, his voice dripping with earnestness. “What happened in Butler, Pa., was a double failure the failure by the Secret Service to properly protect former President Trump and the failure of Congress to properly protect our people from criminal gun violence. We must therefore also ask hard questions about whether our laws are making it too easy for potential assassins to obtain firearms generally and the AR-15 specifically.”
Raskin continued by putting Corey Comperatore, who lost his life in the shooting, and Trump in the “club” of mass-shooting victims. The congressman cited stats that 655 mass shootings took place in the U.S. in 2023, claiming 712 lives and around 2,700 injuries, before making it sound like we can’t go anywhere without getting shot.
“Mass shootings are commonplace,” Raskin said. “They happen at political rallies and constituent meetings in our elementary schools, middle schools and high schools and churches, synagogues and mosques and movie theaters and parades and nightclubs and grocery stores, in concerts and on street corners.”
He added that “Mass shootings have become so frequent that we don't even hear about them anymore.” Of course, what he didn’t say was that we hear about them when Democrats want to grandstand about gun-grabbing.
Flashback: The Biden Administration Has Found a Sneaky Way to Compile an Illegal Gun Registry
Raskin didn’t specifically tie all these mass shootings to AR-15s, but that assumption was all over his melodramatic rhetoric. He also didn’t miss his shot at calling for legislation to prevent law-abiding citizens from buying guns.
“A weapon that can be used to commit a mass shooting an event under the full protection of the Secret Service, together with dozens of state and local police is obviously an intolerable threat to the rest of us who do not receive such protection and obviously does not belong in our communities,” he said before going straight to the typical Democrat talking points about universal background checks and “closing loopholes.”
Even though he admitted that the Trump rally shooter used his father’s rifle to try to assassinate Trump, Raskin claimed that the existence of “weapons of war” in general is the problem.
“We have to find the courage and resolve to pass a ban on the AR-15 and other assault weapons,” he declared. “A ban has broad support. Even the New York Post loudly endorsed such a ban in 2019.”
As Raskin spoke, a staffer held up a large sign with the 2019 Post cover that called for a “ban [on] weapons of war.” I didn’t realize that Congress based its legislative priorities on what the editorial board of the New York Post deems necessary.
Raskin closed his monologue by lamely bringing the conversation back around to decrying violence against politicians. He concluded, “But even as we change the Secret Service and act to ban weapons of war like the AR-15, we still will have fallen short of our duty if we fail to denounce every instance of politically motivated violence. whatever form it takes.”
Ranking Member Raskin uses the Trump assassination attempt to call for more gun control, specifically banning “assault weapons” like the AR-15. pic.twitter.com/pjB5oucve7
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) July 22, 2024
As the hearings have continued, the Democrats keep returning to gun control as a narrative. PJ Media’s managing editor Paula Bolyard is watching the hearings live, and she told me that “the gun control thing is clearly coordinated.”
Leave it to this crop of Democrats to muddy the waters of a discussion of the failure of yet another Biden administration agency with a side discussion on guns. Everything must always go back to the Democrats’ agenda.
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