This time last year, we were well into the border crisis, which has spawned a massive gang, drug, and criminal alien crisis, not to mention a huge fiscal drain on Americans. Republicans had control of all three branches of government and refused to act on anything from the border wall and drug cartels to sanctuary cities and transnational gangs. Fast-forward to a year later, and they still have done nothing, but they did give Democrats everything they wanted on the budget, which destroyed our leverage on every issue. Now, they finally found an urgency to act on public safety, but only in the exactly wrong way. They have now agreed to the entire premise of the Left on guns.

There is no middle ground. You either believe guns kill and that taking guns away from law-abiding citizens helps public safety, or you believe it is evil people who kill and that letting out bad guys from prison while taking away guns is a recipe for Baltimore. Republicans have long believed the latter, and the issues of guns and crime were the only issues where Republicans have held the line this past generation. Now, in one fell swoop, they have joined the Left on “criminal justice reform,” aka jailbreak, and are attacking guns as the source of the violence problem. The zeal they never exhibited to act on senseless murders committed by people who should never have been in the country is now evident in casting a wide net on constitutional liberties and due process.

In July, I called for Republicans to stay in session all of August to focus on a safety and security agenda for our border and to counter sanctuary cities. Now, while they didn’t decide to come back to town yet, GOP leaders have already tasked members with plans to immediately push for gun control in September, including bills to take away guns without due process while echoing and legitimizing the entire Democrat thesis on this issue. As Rep. Thomas Massie said on my podcast this week, so-called “red flag” laws will violate due process for a large number of people. This is all about going after objects, not dangerous people.

Republicans failed to push a safety and security agenda with suburban voters for years and refused to hold Democrats accountable for their increasing hostility toward locking up criminals. They refused to hold them accountable for letting out criminal aliens, including child sex offenders, rather than deporting them from our communities. They refused to utter a peep over one MS-13 mass murder after another when prosecutors said they are directly related to the border flow. They refused to push action on enforcing current immigration laws when one innocent victim after another was needlessly murdered because sanctuaries released already known violent criminals in defiance of numerous ICE detainers. Now, they’ve ceded the entire security agenda to the Left.

Billy Chemirmir, a Kenyan national who overstayed his visa, is now accused of killing 19 people, almost all elderly women, most of whom he killed with nothing more than a pillow. That is almost as many fatalities as in the El Paso shooting, and police suspect there may have been more victims. This was done by someone who should never have been allowed to stay in the country. Even after he found a way to get status, he was arrested for multiple DWIs and assault resulting in bodily injury. He should have been deported. Yet not only is there no inquiry from Mitch McConnell or the Trump administration into what legislation could be passed to close “the criminal alien loophole,” they won’t even talk about this, so no American even knows it happened.

If Republicans would relentlessly focus on these cases as much as Democrats focus on their agenda, the American people would see the absurdity of legislating on objects, when the real issue is going after bad people, especially those who could easily be removed from the country. There is not a single law anyone can point to that would have prevented the El Paso shooting. But simply enforcing immigration laws on someone known to law enforcement numerous times could not only have prevented 19 murders, he could have been completely removed from the country.

The Democrat position is clear. They want open borders, endless cartels and MS-13 in our communities, sanctuary cities, to abolish prison, to abolish ICE, and unvetted migration from the Middle East, and yet they want to take away guns from law-abiding citizens. But what is the GOP position? Rather than holding Democrats accountable for these views and pushing the exact opposite agenda, they offer a faint echo for the Democrat agenda. Why would voters turn to the GOP if both sides admit that gun control is the key to security and one side is doing it more reluctantly?

Republicans need to return to Washington immediately and promote a safety and security agenda rooted in locking up criminals and protecting the right of law-abiding Americans to arm themselves. They should push one vote after another on the following ideas:

Toughening sentences for gun and other violent felons;

Fixing court loopholes that have recently allowed violent criminals to be released early;

Punishing sanctuary cities;

Designating MS-13 and the cartels as terrorists;

Launching an investigation into what really happened in the Las Vegas shooting, the most deadly of all;

And finally, they should fulfill their original promise to pass right-to-carry reciprocity legislation.

The last point provides Republicans with an easily articulated alternative to the Democrat position of “disarm the public and let criminals out of jail.” Nobody can say with a straight face that a single one of the proposed ideas on gun control and red flag laws, which will implicate First and Second Amendment rights as well as basic principles of due process, would have done anything to stop these attacks. Bad guys are still going to get guns. Once a bad guy has access to a gun, what is the point of banning the right to carry – even from the liberal perspective? Why would anyone intent on committing mass murder be dissuaded from carrying a weapon to the place he plans to commit the atrocity? It’s only law-abiding citizens who will listen to those laws, which is a recipe for disaster.

That has always been the position of the Republican Party. Why are they incapable of going on offense now? They need to push right-to-carry legislation and repeal gun-free zones, which would be comical if they weren’t so tragic.

There is no greater opinion poll that market forces. People vote with their pocketbooks. The reality is that women are the fastest-growing demographic of gun owners. There is also an increase in inquiries for concealed carry permits following the shootings. Clearly, people want to feel secure and have the ability to defend themselves now more than ever. Now is the worst time to run from a self-defense agenda and cede safety and security to the party of anarchy.

Sadly, Republicans refuse to raise outrage over sanctuary cities, gangs, and cartels. They refuse to raise outrage over the drug crisis plaguing so many suburban families as a result of empowering the cartels with open borders. And when it comes to being tough on crime, Republicans have downright agreed with Democrats on the need to empty out the prisons rather than shaming Democrats for their position. Thus Republicans have destroyed all their ammo in this fight.

Republicans have won on the issue of security for decades. It has been the last issue holding the party together after they essentially ceded every fiscal and social issue to the Left. For them to lose on security with suburban voters would be the final act of malpractice rendering this party beyond worthless. (For more from the author of “Republicans Should Jump to Push for Our Security and Self-Defense” please click HERE)

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Thank goodness we have the Second Amendment. I say that a lot, but I’m especially grateful after seeing the latest news out of New Zealand.

Less than a week after the mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand has moved to ban and confiscate semi-automatic long guns.

The bill bans so-called “military style semi-automatic firearms,” which according to the bill are any rifle or shotgun that accepts a detachable magazine that holds more than five rounds. But .22 and smaller-caliber arms are exempt, so everybody’s varmint guns are safe.

And, according to reports, the legal owners of now-illegal hardware will be entitled to “fair and reasonable” compensation through a buyback program that’s expected to cost a couple hundred million dollars.

How generous.

Naturally, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., says that we “must follow New Zealand’s lead.”

This is exactly why we have the Second Amendment. Whatever government currently in power in the U.S. cannot push through a ban like this or anything close to it because of our constitutional protection of the right to bear arms.

Gun bans like this frequently follow on the heels of a heinous violent crime, when people are thinking least clearly about the issue. We don’t think clearly when we’re dealing with grief and trauma. That’s just a fact. And just as it’s common for individuals to make sweeping, ill-advised life changes in the wake of personal tragedies, it’s possible for large groups of people to do ill-advised things in the wake of public tragedies, like give up their ability to defend themselves.

That’s what happened with Britain’s big gun ban in the 1990s, the same with Australia, and the same now with New Zealand. And it’s the exact tactic the anti-gunners in this country employ when they immediately try to use human suffering to push for more gun control. It took New Zealand less than a week to enact this gun-grab.

In response, you have folks like the New York Time’s token alleged conservative Bret Stephens, who piggybacks on tragedy to call to repeal the Second Amendment so that we can pass more gun control. Without 2A, a Democrat-controlled Congress could probably beat New Zealand’s time at passing a gun ban in the future.

That’s just one thing that’s so great about having a Constitution that’s hard to change by design and has language specifically protecting the right to keep and bear arms. Every human being is born with the intrinsic right to defend themselves. Period. Our Founders knew this and wisely put a backstop in place that keeps reactionary impulses from trampling over that right.

Knee-jerk gun ban proposals in reaction to horrible events don’t get to use an express lane. Activists typically have to spend a lot of time convincing a lot of people of their position if they really want to change the document. That’s a feature, not a bug.

Because, for the record, once again: Gun bans only affect the law-abiding; the best defense against a bad guy with a gun is the ability to fire back; and the warm and fuzzy feeling people might get from passing new gun control laws won’t stop a bullet when a wicked person breaks them. (For more from the author of “New Zealand’s Knee-Jerk Gun Ban Is EXACTLY Why We Have the Second Amendment” please click HERE)

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A staunchly anti-gun California Democrat made headlines after he suggested using America’s nuclear arsenal against gun owners who refuse to hand over their hardware.

As reported at Fox News, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., made the remark on Twitter after another user said that Swalwell wants a war with gun owners: “Because that’s what you would get” with his gun control agenda.

And it would be a short war my friend. The government has nukes. Too many of them. But they’re legit. I’m sure if we talked we could find common ground to protect our families and communities.

— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 16, 2018

It’s easy to point out how insane it is that a sitting member of Congress is talking about confiscating the property of American citizens and using nukes against those who don’t comply, because it’s pretty insane. Whether or not you believe his claims of being facetious is up you.

But it’s also nice to see an anti-gun politician take the mask off for a moment to remind us what the debate about the Second Amendment is really about and why 2A exists in the first place. The talk about gun control is around these mythical “commonsense” laws that we can put in place that will supposedly make Americans safer through further firearms regulation. “We don’t want to take your guns away,” the argument goes, “we just want some common sense.”

But whenever gun control boosters start talking about these “commonsense” policies, things tend to fall apart when we get down to the details. So far, I’ve yet to run into a proposal that:

1. Is a legitimate policy innovation over what’s already on the books (i.e. isn’t just better enforcement of already existing law or stiffer penalties for breaking it).

2. Passes muster with the Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and 14th Amendments.

3. Isn’t completely ignorant of how guns work in the first place (e.g., defining “assault weapons” by common cosmetic features).

4. Would actually deter or reduce mass shootings or gun violence in quantity or severity, rather than just creating more soft targets – by disarming them – for those who were already going to break the law anyway.

This brings us back to the natural end of the gun control movement: bans and confiscation. Ultimately, this is where most anti-gun politicians and professional activists want to end up; those “commonsense” measures are stepping stones.

While some Americans would undoubtedly roll over and acquiesce to such an unjust action, a large number of them wouldn’t give up so easily. That kind of defiance against unjust rule is actually why America exists in the first place, in case anyone slept through the high school history class that covered what happened at Lexington and Concord.

In fact, another small dose of military history might actually help Swalwell understand the situation as well. In order to have to have the kind of “short war” that Swalwell predicts here, the U.S. government probably would have to go nuclear. Those who argue that the military could swiftly disarm the American public seem to forget that the two longest and most unsuccessful military engagements in American history have been in Afghanistan and Vietnam — against dedicated local populations with less sophisticated firepower and training.

But without historical ignorance, the American gun control movement wouldn’t exist at all. And statements and attitudes like Swalwell’s are exactly why the Second Amendment exists in the first place. (For more from the author of “Swalwell’s ‘Nukes’ Comment Is Exactly Why We Have the Second Amendment” please click HERE)

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