The Democratic convention hasn’t gone into specifics on much, opting for platitudes over policy, but if you look at who is selected to be the messenger, you can find out where the party really stands. This holds true for its message on gun control.
The DNC used an extended clip of Emma Gonzalez, a gun control activist and survivor of the Parkland school shooting, in its video segment on gun control Wednesday night. Like most of the gun control rhetoric that came out of Parkland and the ensuing activist group “March For Our Lives,” the speech is full of absurdities, claiming it’s harder to “make plans with friends” than to buy a gun and suggesting any defense of gun ownership is a justification for students dying.
The March For Our Lives is an abominable group itself, suggesting that politicians who support the Second Amendment place price tags on student lives and boasting a program on its own website, allowing you to print out your state’s price tag. The group does not believe in the Second Amendment, as evidenced by it wanting the Supreme Court to reexamine its proper understanding of gun rights in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case.
This meshes with Joe Biden’s previous signals on just how restrictive his gun control policy would be. When Beto O’Rourke endorsed Biden before Super Tuesday, Biden promised the one-time Texas Senate candidate he would lead the former vice president’s gun control efforts. While running for president, O’Rourke vowed to enact a national gun confiscation policy.
Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, is similarly sympathetic to gun confiscation, saying it was a “great idea” during her presidential run. She also said that she would have given Congress 100 days to enact her gun control agenda and that she would just do it by executive order if Congress defied her.
Biden and the Democratic Party have only tried to hit around the edges on gun control, given that millions have become new gun owners in 2020. In the 2016 presidential election, voters who lived in gun-toting households went for Donald Trump in every state but Vermont. Gun-owning households voted for Trump by a 32-point margin nationwide.
Biden’s main election focus has been the fact that he’s not Trump, but with airtime to fill during the convention, the Democratic Party has had to fill time hinting at its own policy goals. It has signaled yet another government takeover of the healthcare system after the disaster that was Obamacare, and now, it’s informing voters just how hostile to the Second Amendment a Biden administration would be.
