16 SEPTEMBER 2019 AMERICAN RIFLEMAN
POLITICAL REPORT
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W
hat do you call a man who runs
for the nation’s highest office
specifically on a platform of gun
control and who believes modern mass media
does a fantastic job of “uphold[ing] the
promise of our Constitution”?
How about a failure? Perhaps a hypocrite?
Maybe both?
If you haven’t heard of Rep. Eric Swalwell
of California’s 15th District, don’t feel too bad.
You are in good company.
Swalwell was among two dozen or so
pretenders angling for the Democrat nomination
in next year’s presidential election. His four-
month-long bid ended July 8—likely before most
Americans even knew it had started.
On the other hand, earlier Swalwell gained
some notoriety (or infamy, as the case may
be) as the U.S. Congressman who endorsed a
broad ban on common semi-automatic rifles
requiring even those who had previously
obtained the guns lawfully to surrender them
to the government.
In a testy Twitter exchange, he invoked—
he later claimed jokingly—the use of nuclear
weapons against those who would dare to
resist this proposal.
The backlash provoked by that public gaffe
might have been enough to convince most
people that they didn’t have much of a future
claiming to represent the American electorate.
But not Eric Swalwell.
Not only did he go on to launch what he
grandiosely called his “presidential campaign,”
he did so with extreme gun control as his
signature issue. Speaking at a town hall
meeting on gun control the day after he
announced his candidacy, Swalwell told his
audience: “My pledge to you tonight is that
this issue comes first.”
Later, he boasted to the media: “I’m taking
the battle to the NRA’s doorstep with a new,
broader package of common-sense reforms to
end gun violence.”
The rollout of this initiative was supposed
to occur in a dramatic press conference in
late June in front of the NRA’s Fairfax, Va.,
headquarters.
Yet, the “event” managed to draw only
a small handful of people. Favored with
relatively good weather for a Virginia summer,
the crowd topped out at 18 people during the
height of the proceedings.
Ironically, this embarrassingly lame spectacle
occurred at the same time a capacity crowd was
massing at the 20,000-seat Amway Center in
Orlando, Fla., to attend the re-election kick-off
event for President Donald Trump.
This coincidence of events—and the
contrast in numbers and enthusiasm betweenthe two men’s supporters—said all that
needed to be said about how badly Swalwell
had misread the American appetite for
extreme gun control.
President Trump, of course, is a champion
of gun owners and a staunch supporter of the
right to keep and bear arms. He mentioned
the Second Amendment three times in
Orlando, provoking raucous cheering and
applause from the crowd.
Like his would-be opponent from California,
the president has situated guns at the center of
his campaign, but from the opposite viewpoint.
“We will protect our Second Amendment,” he
promised in Orlando.Meanwhile, the plan Swalwell unveiled at
his June press conference would, if enacted in
its entirety, make access to firearms in America
more restrictive than in most Western nations
that have no pretense of a constitutional right
to arms.
The framework’s centerpiece was a massive
ban on semi-automatic firearms, with criminal
penalties awaiting current owners who
refused to relinquish their lawfully obtained
and constitutionally protected property for
whatever compensation the bureaucracy
deemed fitting.
But there was much more, including a
200-round cap on the amount of ammunition
a person could possess in a given cartridge
or gauge; a nationwide registry of every gun
owner and firearm in America; federal licensing
and training of firearm owners; and rationing of
handgun and ammunition purchases.
That’s not even a complete list, but it does
help to show how out-of-step Swalwell is on
guns, including among an increasingly anti-gun
field of Democratic candidates running their
parties nomination, to say nothing of the
public at large.
Even the anti-gun Washington Post
recognized the delusional nature of Eric
Swalwell’s candidacy. “[H]e did himself and his
party some good,” a Post article stated, by
“recognizing his presidential campaign was
going nowhere.”
On that point, at least,
I can agree with The
Washington Post.Sometimes Gun Control Doesn’t Pay
By Jason Ouimet
Interim Executive
Director, NRA-ILA