By: José Niño
On July 20, 2023, Senator Mike Braun introduced an amendment to the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act that would have barred President Biden and the Department of Health and Human Services from labeling gun violence a public health emergency for the purpose of enacting gun control measures and infringing on Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
“National and local politicians across the country are always trying to restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens. We need to set into law that no one can declare a national health emergency to seize the power to restrict our Second Amendment rights with the stroke of a pen. I will always stand up for Hoosiers’ rights to protect themselves and their families,” declared Braun.
President Joe Biden, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Senator Alex Padilla have declared that gun violence is a public health emergency.
Braun’s amendment would nominally protect the right to bear arms from executive branch violations by asserting that the HHS secretary does not have the power to enact gun control under the pretext of a public health emergency.
Braun made the following remarks at the markup meeting of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee:
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans saw Big Government flourish and many of our constitutional rights be diminished.
“More and more, big government wants to turn everything into a national emergency.
“Recently, the Secretary of Health and Human Services advocated for gun violence to be declared a public health emergency to grant HHS power to restrict Americans’ right to keep and bear arms.
“The Department of Health and Human Services was never intended to implement gun control of any kind.
“My amendment would simply prohibit HHS from declaring a public health emergency to implement gun control.
“I urge my colleagues to vote yes on my amendment.”
Dudley Brown, the president of the National Association for Gun Rights, made the following remarks about Braun’s amendment:
“Never underestimate the lengths in which the gun control crowd will go to take away Second Amendment rights. Using the Department of Health and Human Services to declare a ‘gun violence public health emergency’ is unfortunately a very real possibility.“
Braun was first elected to the US Senate in 2018, when he defeated Democratic incumbent Joe Donnelly. He previously served as the state representative of Indiana’s 63rd State House District.
The introduction of this amendment is a necessary measure during a time when the political class routinely uses mass crises as a pretext to justify vast expansions in government control. With the Democratic Party using former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s maxim of “never letting a serious crisis go to waste” as its standard operating procedure, there will need to be certain measures in place to check these bad actors.
The anti-gun Left is playing for keeps and they’re ready to use all crises as ways to ram their tyrannical agenda down our throats. In turn, pro-Second Amendment must push back and scuttle these efforts wherever they turn up.
José Niño is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. Contact him via Facebook, Twitter, or email him at [email protected]. Get his e-book, The 10 Myths of Gun Control, here.