Calif. Rep. Eric Swalwell (Twitter)
Rep. Eric Swalwell Unveils Gun-Control Plan at NRA Protest of 18 Attendees
Democrat Presidential hopefuls advocate for Ban of scary looking ‘Military-Style’ Assault Weapons
By Katy Grimes, June 19, 2019 2:05 am
California’s Rep. Eric Swalwell held a “really big rally” Monday outside of the National Rifle Association’s headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, where unveiled his gun control proposal.
Swalwell called for banning “every single” assault weapon and buying back such weapons from those who already have them. Swalwell wrote an op ed in USA Today last year proposing a ban on “possession of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons,” which means “scary looking guns” to gun control advocates.
The very term “assault weapons” is dubious. The term was first used by Josh Sugarmann, head of the anti-gun group, the Violence Policy Center, “a national educational foundation working to enhance gun control in America.”
“The semi-automatic weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun — can only increase that chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons,” Sugarmann said in 1988.
Swalwell also said he would hold weapon manufacturers responsible by “lifting the shield of liability that protects” them, and he said gun licensing procedures should include buying insurance, Politico reported. “He said everyone who buys a firearm should go through a background check, but he did not detail what that process should entail.”
Reports of 18 protesters who joined him were confirmed in photos and on Twitter.
Heather and Angela, of @MomsDemand, helping us unveil our comprehensive plan to END GUN VIOLENCE. https://t.co/Bq7Wxtp2Jb pic.twitter.com/7RmopvrVcO
— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) June 18, 2019
The NRA posted their own photos.
Look! All of presidential candidate Swalwell's supporters came out to our headquarters today. No wonder he is polling at 0%. pic.twitter.com/sFZAishEoC
— NRA (@NRA) June 17, 2019
“We’re done letting the bullying, tweeting minority that leads the NRA dictate whether Americans live or die,” Swalwell told the crowd, Townhall reported. “I’m taking the battle to the NRA’s doorstep with a new, broader package of commonsense reforms to end gun violence. We’re done relying on thoughts and prayers – it’s time to act.”
Politico also reported, “In April, Kamala Harris proposed implementing universal background checks, rolling back a measure that prevents victims from holding gun-makers and firearm dealers liable for their losses, and closing the boyfriend loophole by extending gun restrictions that apply to people convicted of stalking, assaulting or abusing a spouse or child to those who have harmed a dating partner.”
However, they did not report that in April, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), also a presidential hopeful, said she would use Executive Action to take gun dealers’ licenses away, trampling all over the separation of powers, California Globe reported.
“Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress a hundred days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws,” Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) said in April on CNN. “And if they fail to do it, I will take executive action.”
Harris has been a vocal critic of President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders, and said in April, “I believe that we need to get rid of this president.”
Swalwell’s long list of gun control measures would make gun ownership so difficult and amounts to gun confiscation, regardless of the Second Amendment:
I. Ban and Buy Back Semiautomatic Assault Weapons
II. Invest in Hope for Our Neighborhoods
III. Tackle America’s Firearm Suicide Epidemic
IV. Protect Victims of Domestic Violence
V. Mitigate and Prevent Mass Shootings
VI. Secure All Sales of Firearms and Ammunition
VII. Invest in Gun Violence Research and Community-Centered Health Care
VIII. Regulate Manufacturers
Details are on Swalwell’s campaign website.
In January, the Supreme Court granted long-overdue review of a case involving the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. “Up to now, the court has failed to articulate any test to protect gun rights, allowing lower courts to do as they please,” James Phillips and John Yoo wrote in a Los Angeles Times op ed. “So they have upheld 10-day waiting periods before a firearm purchase, bans on semiautomatic rifles and large-capacity magazines, and prohibitions on carrying a firearm, either openly, concealed, or both. Hence, courts have allowed governments to trample gun rights with only superficial justification, in ways inconceivable if the right at issue was speech or privacy. And for the last decade, the Supreme Court has only looked the other way.”
Just in time for the 2020 Presidential election: “If the American people want to ban guns to curb criminal violence, they can. But they must first amend the Constitution. The courts should not be allowed to delete parts of the Constitution they don’t like through creative judicial editing.”
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September 27, 2018 -
Swalwell’s plan is puerile, mechanical and wholly unworthy of a U.S. Representative. But what’s missing from his freshman attempt is any mention of criminal activity. His scope is limited to peaceable, lawful citizens and simply enumerates activities that he would permit. Perhaps he should post an order on the internet that everyone must deliver their firearms to the nearest law enforcement station within 24 hours. Anyone failing to comply will be shot.
All y’all NRA patsies, along with millions of gun-toting cowards, are wrong, wrong, wrong about the need for gun control in this nation. More than that, you’re selfish, insensitive human beings that apparently cannot generate enough empathy to wake up and realize the damage to our collective national psyche these weapons are perpetrating upon We the People as a whole.
Rep. Swalwell is one of the few elected representatives in this nation brave enough to speak out against the proliferation of dangerous and unnecessary firearms throughout this nation. I’ve spoken with owners of such weapons, and they are the first to admit they are wholly unnecessary, but hey, nobody’s stopping them from owning them and it’s such a rush to just hold, much less to fire these weapons; it’s so much fun, especially when you’re a middle-aged, middle-class white man that makes up the vast majority of all gun owners, yet rarely, if ever, comes face-to-face with the impact on the human beings on the receiving end of these weapons experience.
Anybody else notice Senator Kamala Harris voice her support for Mr. Swalwell’s pitch for banning and buying back all “assault weapons of war?”
If Rep Swalwell remains in Congress, he will be a contender for higher office for years to come, based solely on his ability and willingness to speak to power, full stop. Let’s hope there are more sane Americans to listen to his ideas in the years to come, because if we fail to truncate this national sickness that is the addiction to weapons of war, we do so at our peril.
Peace, Love & Resistance,
Erik
The only thing that kept my dad and grandparents from being hung in Bertie Count, N.C during the Jim Crow era, were guns. Ida B Wells said the best rifle of her day “should have a place of honor above every black American’s fireplace” for it “protected us when the government wouldn’t”. Swalwell is the living embodiment of everything most of us hate about Californians. A plastic, disingenuous, elitist. One who claims to speak for the little guy but wants to make the little guy even more helpless to defend ourselves from criminals. He is the type of hypocrite that would tell someone, like me, that the police will protect me, then turn a blind eye when the police are far to often the ones who law-abiding people like me would need protection FROM. The police in Detroit conducted a “No-Knock” raid on a family’s house for an UNPAID GAS BILL!!! Korryn Gaines was murdered by police because she failed to show up for TRAFFIC COURT!!! So you boot-licking government loving sheep can keep telling yourselves “the police will protect us”. Don’t look at me when you find yourself asking “who the hell is going to protect us from the police?”