The Second Amendment is going to be a major point of contention this election cycle. Vice President Kamala Harris has made it very clear that she wants to pass gun control. She even picked someone who supported gun control explicitly as her vice presidential pick.
We’ve had numerous discussions about the issue and there’s no reason to believe this won’t continue through November.
But over at ABC News, they decided to look at both vice presidential picks and their stances on the Second Amendment.
Of course, this is the headline they picked which kind of suggests a few things all on its own: “JD Vance and Tim Walz claim to be 2nd Amendment stalwarts. But where do the VP picks really stand on guns?”
Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz both claim to be champions of gun rights for law-abiding citizens and have touted personal stories of growing up in households where firearms were commonplace, but the vice presidential candidates have vastly different views on how to curb America’s gun violence epidemic.
As the Democratic National Convention begins Monday in Chicago, Vice President Kamala Harris has made gun control a top priority.
…
While Harris and Trump’s polarizing stances on gun control are well documented, the positions of their running mates are emerging for the first time on a national level.
Vance, the 40-year-old Ohio U.S. senator and Marine veteran, and Walz, the 60-year-old Minnesota governor and Army National Guard veteran, have portrayed themselves as strong Second Amendment advocates. But they have voiced starkly different views on gun control.
That’s putting it mildly.
Look, here’s what you need to know about the Second Amendment stances of the two vice presidential nominees.
While ABC News goes into the whole thing about claiming that Walz had a conversion moment following Parkland, they gloss over the fact that he was pro-gun for as long as it was convenient, then became anti-gun just as he decided to run for statewide office in an anti-gun state. He took the NRA’s money and support until it was more politically expedient to throw them under the bus.
Meanwhile, J.D. Vance has a strong Second Amendment record. The only blemish is one comment at one time that sounded like support for red flag laws, but he has strenuously denied meant any such thing. That comment came just weeks after the Parkland shooting, however, and about the time we were learning just how many red flags–and prohibiting offenses–the killer had thrown up in the weeks and months before the mass murder happened. Everyone was pretty emotional at the time.
Yeah, I gave him some guff during his Senate race for that comment, but considering the date he made those comments, especially based on his record since then, there’s nothing to be concerned about there.
Walz says that changed his opinion on guns, though the same report says that he claims he always supported “commonsense gun control” his entire time in Congress. I somehow bet that’s like how he carried an AR-15 in war as a command sergeant major.
The truth of the matter is that only one has acted as a Second Amendment advocate their entire time in public office. The other sold out gun owners the moment it was necessary for higher office.
Only one of these two actually has any real Second Amendment credentials left.
