By: Teresa Mull
Democrats have given up all pretense of supporting the Second Amendment, according to The Atlantic.
“The party is betting that support for restrictions is more likely to attract moderate voters than turn them off,” the magazine reports.
Indeed, Democrats have been bragging about their presidential campaign’s embrace of gun control. Fox News reports:
Brady United, one of the highest-profile gun control groups in the U.S., billed Biden and Harris as “the strongest gun safety ticket in history” while promoting a virtual event during the Democratic National Convention (DNC) last week. The National Rifle Association (NRA), the most notable pro-Second Amendment group in the U.S., on its website called Biden-Harris the “most anti-gun presidential ticket in history.”
The Atlantic agrees the Dems think gun control is a surefire way to attract voters:
This is the new normal in the Democratic Party: Moderate voters not only support gun-control legislation, but have begun to use the issue as a litmus test. In 2010, roughly 20 percent of all federal candidates who received “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association were Democrats; by the 2018 midterms, that number was down to less than 2 percent, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy organization founded in 2013 and largely funded by Bloomberg. Which means that Democrats in 2020 are embracing gun control in an unprecedented way, betting that their support is more likely to attract voters than turn them away—especially in the suburban districts that are quickly becoming central to the party map.
Nowhere has this shift been clearer than at this year’s Democratic convention, which was expressly designed to appeal to a bipartisan viewership and where gun control has been a central focus.
These trends represent an ever-growing polarization of American gun policy. At the same time progressives are abandoning all pretense of support for gun rights, Americans are stocking up on firearms more than ever. WRIC reports:
Thousands turned out this weekend for the first gun show in Richmond since a new universal background checks laws took effect earlier this summer.
It was also the first event of its kind since the coronavirus pandemic began back in March, according to the Virginia Citizens Defense League.
Some have speculated that anxiety surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, months of civil unrest and a slew of new gun control laws in Virginia are contributing to above average sales for the gun industry.
Teresa Mull ([email protected]) is editor of Gunpowder Magazine.