Monday night’s CNN Town Hall was one of the first opportunities for the top Democratic presidential contenders to come together and share their views on allowing child rapists, terrorists and murderers to vote, and other formerly radical policies that have somehow found their way into the Democratic mainstream.
As each candidate vied to outdo one another, California Sen. Kamala Harris, widely rumored to have the party’s implicit backing as the “establishment choice” in a widening field of nearly two dozen candidates, boldly declared that she would take executive action to force federal agencies to write new rules on gun control should Congress “fail to act”.
“Upon being elected, I will give the United States Congress 100 days to get their act together and have the courage to pass reasonable gun safety laws, and if they fail to do it, then I will take executive action,” Harris said Monday.
An aide to Harris said the senator would direct the ATF “to promulgate a regulation” that makes it so that “if you sell five or more guns for profit a year, you will be considered a ‘dealer’ and required to perform background checks.”
She added that she would push to “ban assault weapons”, which, as she is no doubt aware thanks to her time as a prosecutor (though most non-gun-owning Americans probably don’t understand the difference) would mean banning most semi-automatic weapons, leaving hunters and hobbyists with revolvers and pump-action rifles and shotguns.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she wants to ban “assault weapons,” which means all semi-automatic firearms
Harris says she “will give” Congress 100 days to pass radical gun control laws or else she will use executive action to ram through her agenda pic.twitter.com/Ly8dpQisld
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 23, 2019
For those who are still unclear about what Harris means by ‘banning assault weapons’, here’s a flowchart that California, one of the few states that has maintained its own assault weapons ban, uses to determine what is and isn’t illegal.
Harris’s sweeping gun control plan includes proposals to require universal background checks (federal law only requires background checks by licensed dealers, leading to the so-called ‘gun show’ loophole), reinstate a federal “assault weapons ban” that was initially passed by President Bill Clinton and remained in effect between 1994 to 2004, ban high-capacity ammunition clips, make gun trafficking a federal crime and prohibit those convicted of a federal hate crime from buying firearms.
Among her more controversial proposals is her plan to repeal the Protection of Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that shields gun makers and sellers from liability for crimes committed using their weapons.
Of course, the Harris campaign acknowledged that the candidate’s plan would, if enacted, almost certainly face court challenges. But breaking the impasse on gun control, which has divided Republicans and Democrats, is a top Democratic priority, since politicians have cynically convinced grieving communities that tightening background checks and restrictions on gun purchases will somehow magically solve the problem of mass shootings.
Oh, and as if her radical gun control proposals weren’t enough to secure some headline real estate, Harris also became one of the first Democratic contenders in the mainstream to publicly support impeachment for President Trump.
Nancy Pelosi will be thrilled, we imagine.
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