Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
An audio recording captured and published by Congressional Republicans in 2018 presents Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R) challenger, Texas Rep. Colin Allred (D), suggesting things would be better in the United States if the Second Amendment had not been written.
He was speaking at a campaign event when the conversation turned toward the interpretation and viability of the Second Amendment.
Allred said, “Within the confines of the accurately applied Second Amendment we can do everything we want to do, as far as regulating weapons and all that.”
He expounded:
The Second Amendment does have, in the first sentence, in order to maintain, you know, ‘well regulated militia,’ and ‘the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’ … There’s two ideas there, the recent trend has only been to focus on the right to bear arms instead of the well regulated militia part. So I just think we have to accurately apply it.
Allred then opined, “Would it be better if it hadn’t been written? Of course. But there’s no chance that we’re going to repeal any of the Bill of Rights amendments. … It wouldn’t happen, it’s not within the bounds of reality in this country. But what we could do, I think, there’s plenty of room within there to not allow people to have ‘weapons of war.'”
Relevant part begins at 3:01: https://youtu.be/b8KxSteLswU
Breitbart News reported that Allred co-sponsored universal background check legislation, H.R. 8, in the U.S. House in 2021. The bill criminalized private gun sales conducted apart from an FBI background check.
Other co-sponsors of H.R. 8 included Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib Rashida (D-MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).
Allred voted for the Federal Extreme Risk Protection Order Act, a red flag law, on June 9, 2022. The Act was designed to allow courts to issue orders “without a hearing” to mandate an individual surrender his firearms and ammunition for two weeks. Orders to surrender guns for longer periods of time required a hearing.