Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
CNN reports that soon after Labor Day weekend, President Joe Biden will announce new gun control efforts, which include bringing together anti-gun state lawmakers from around the country for White House meetings.
A visit to Chicago last Friday by Vice President Kamala Harris was reportedly the first step in Biden’s plan to “make gun safety a central issue of his reelection campaign.” “Gun safety” translates to “gun control.” The effort will almost certainly be tied to getting more Democrats elected at all levels. This much was acknowledged in the CNN report, which noted Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety “spent $55 million on gun safety supporting candidates – at this point, almost exclusively Democrats – for a variety of offices in the 2020 cycle,” and Everytown President John Feinblatt “said to expect more heavy spending in 2024.”
While the Waco Tribune noted how gun control groups had come together early to endorse Biden for president next year, the re-election strategy reportedly includes a heavy emphasis on getting young voters to turn out for Biden next November.
According to WLS in Chicago—the local ABC affiliate—Harris’ Friday visit was to speak to Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action. This was part of her appearance at Everytown’s “Gun Safety Conference.”
A report earlier this summer by PBS reported on shootings in downtown St. Louis, Florida’s Hollywood Beach and Dadeville, Alabama, noting, “What these and other recent mass shootings share in common is they all involve suspects in their teens, highlighting what can be a deadly mix of teenage bravado and impulsiveness with access to guns.”
The PBS report also said, “For 2020, the first year of the pandemic, numbers of homicides by teens 12 to 17 jumped by nearly 40 percent compared to the previous year, from 974 to 1,336, according to FBI data. There was a total of around 18,000 homicides in the U.S. in 2020.”
Against this backdrop, last Friday’s ruling by the Illinois state Supreme Court that the state’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” is constitutional may have felt like a win for the gun prohibition movement, but the Second Amendment Foundation quickly stated this has no impact on its federal lawsuit challenging the same gun ban. That case is known as Harrel v. Raoul, and SAF is joined by the Illinois State Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, Marengo Guns, the C4 Gun Store and Dane Harrel, for whom the case is known. SAF and its partners filed the federal challenge earlier this year in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. They are represented by attorney David Sigale of Wheaton.
“While we are disappointed in the state court’s narrow 4-3 decision,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “our federal case remains very much alive and we will continue fighting the Illinois ban.”
SAF Executive Director Adam Kraut echoed Gottlieb’s sentiments.
“It is always unfortunate when a Court fails to uphold constitutional rights,” Kraut said. “Fortunately for the people of Illinois, our challenge to the state’s ban on so-called ‘assault weapons’ remains pending in federal court. We look forward to vindicating the rights of the People of Illinois.”
SAF has been running a blistering advertisement on several cable networks, attacking Biden’s gun control efforts and warning American gun owners that the president and his party definitely are coming after their guns.
Meanwhile, CNN’s report, which referred to the gun control crowd as “gun safety advocates,” said anti-gunners have been “pressing Biden advisers and other Democrats” on using guns as a campaign issue. They reportedly have polling data showing how the game plan must keep reminding voters that Republicans have been blocking gun control efforts, which allegedly “negates” GOP efforts to highlight rising crime under Biden and the Democrats.
What this means to gun owners and Second Amendment activists is that they will have to work harder over the next 15 months to get out the vote, especially among pro-rights youth voters, and to support candidates who can win at all levels.
Possibly the start of that effort will come at next month’s 38th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) in Phoenix, Arizona. Co-sponsored by SAF and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, this event will bring together many of the leaders in the Second Amendment movement with grassroots gun rights activists from across the country.
GRPC is a free event, scheduled the weekend of Sept. 22-24 at the Marriott Phoenix Airport hotel. The theme of this year’s event is “Road to Liberty.”
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.