The Patriot Post® · Booker's Dangerous Shot at Gun Rights

As the nearly two dozen Democrats running for president in 2020 vie for media attention and advance the party’s overall strategy to assemble a collective constituency of dunces, they’re putting forward various proposals that are one part crazy and one part tyranny. Cory Booker’s gun proposal — the most restrictive in the field — is both.

The New Jersey senator released “Cory’s plan to end the gun violence epidemic.” Where does “gun violence” usually take place? Democrat-run urban poverty plantations, which are rampant with gangs and drugs. In other words, it’s a cultural and political problem (created by Democrat policies), not a gun problem.

Naturally, Booker all but ignores that, focusing instead on the tired litany of leftist gun measures aimed at law-abiding citizens. Universal background checks? Check. Ban “assault weapons”? Check. Microstamping? Check. Red flag laws? Check.

But three proposals stand out. The first isn’t exactly new, and that’s stripping gun manufacturers of legal immunity when a bad guy uses a gun to murder people. Practically this came into play back in March when some Newtown families won the ability to sue Remington — because a sociopath murdered his own mother, stole her gun, and then slaughtered 26 more people at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012. That suit is pending.

Second is gun licensing (with training requirements), which Booker proposes for all gun owners and likens to driver’s licenses. “You need a license to drive a car,” he says. “You should need one to own a gun.” Aside from the state license versus federal license inconsistency, the more apt comparison is requiring a license for First Amendment rights to free speech or exercise of religion. Indeed, no other constitutional right requires a license. That’s because our rights are natural gifts of our Creator, not, as leftists believe, privileges conferred by the government.

Is training and learning gun safety a really good idea for gun owners? Yes. Is requiring it (with renewal every five years) to exercise a constitutional right the way to go? Nope. Moreover, Booker essentially calls for a national firearms registry (for guns and owners) and even refused to rule out punishment for the otherwise law-abiding citizen who declines to surrender banned firearms. Given the record of various bureaucracies targeting Americans for politically disfavored activities, or how such registries have worked out in countries like Venezuela, such a registry is self-evidently a terrible idea.

Finally, as if to illustrate that last point, Booker wants to “bring the fight to the NRA” by “calling on the IRS to investigate whether certain activities recently reported in the news media should lead to revocation of its tax-exempt status.” Those “activities” are unfortunate internal strife that Booker aims to exploit for political targeting reminiscent of the IRS’s targeting of the Tea Party. Booker wants to destroy the NRA because it’s the nation’s leading defender of the Second Amendment.

In short, don’t think for a minute the Second Amendment isn’t on the line in 2020.