2020 Democrat Candidate Gillibrand Makes Extreme Claims to Smear Gun Manufacturers

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand went after gun manufacturers at a campaign stop on Monday, saying that they WANT to sell guns to potential terrorists and mentally ill people. She believes gun advocates‘ opposition to universal background checks proves this.

After attacking the National Rifle Association, she targeted gun manufacturers.

“Because gun manufacturers only care about gun sales, they oppose the common sense reform that can save lives. They want to oppose universal background checks because they want to sell an assault rifle to a teenager in a Walmart or to someone on the terror watch list or to someone who’s gravely mentally ill with a violent background or to someone with a criminal conviction for a violent crime. They want to sell those weapons, that is why they oppose universal background checks.”

This is straight up fear mongering.

First of all, the notion that gun manufacturers WANT to sell their products to dangerous people just to make a profit is ludicrous. Few, if any, Americans wants to see violence and murder carried out through firearms or in any other fashion. A politician or anyone else should be ashamed of themselves for saying such a thing, including Democrat Gillibrand.

The Problem with ‘Watch Lists’

Second, the reason so many gun advocates and civil libertarians oppose stripping people of their constitutional rights based on government “terror watch lists” is because such lists are prone to abuse.

After the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida in 2016, the Washington Post’s Ramzi Kassem explained why even though he is a gun control advocate, he thought using government watch lists was a bad idea.

“After a lone gunman wielding commercially available firearms massacred 49 people in Orlando, politicians seized on one particular legislative response: a proposal to close the so-called “terror gap” by preventing people on the federal government’s terrorist watch lists from buying weapons,” Kassem wrote. “That may sound, on the surface, like a reasonable solution. Actually, it’s terribly misguided.”

“Not only does this plan overstate the reliability and fairness of federal watch lists, but it also scapegoats an already unpopular minority group and misses the true nature of the gun problem in the United States,” he wrote.

Any American can end up on a watch list based on mere “reasonable suspicion.”

“In America, ‘reasonable suspicion’ is the low standard by which your rights are trampled if you have the misfortune of not being white or privileged,” Kassem notes. “It is based on reasonable suspicion, for example, that poor black and Latino youths in New York City are stopped and frisked by police in their own neighborhoods. And it is based on reasonable suspicion that Muslims get thrown on terrorist watch lists. The crushing majority of CLEAR’s watch-listed clients have been American Muslims.”

Not that Gillibrand knows much about gun issues or anything else for that matter.

Sen. Gillibrand’s recent gun statements are based in ignorance for the purpose of fear mongering. But what else is new for Democrats?

is a professional writer and editor with over 15 years of experience in conservative media and Republican politics. He... More about John Hanson

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