House Democrats passed an ‘assault weapons’ ban on Friday in a 217-213 vote, with two Republicans voting in favor of the ban and five Democrats opposed (and one Republican not voting).
The abolishment of the Second Amendment, disguised as bill HR 1808, started on Thursday evening when the House Rules Committee scheduled an emergency meeting to pass a rule allowing legislation to be sent to the House floor the same day it’s considered, even without the 2/3rds majority support that’s normally needed. On Friday morning, the House swiftly approved that rule with 218 votes in favor; all of them coming from Democrats.
Bearingarms.com reports: Ironically, the debate over the resolution, which was supposed to last for 60 minutes, actually took far less time than the “15 minute” vote on the resolution itself, which ultimately lasted for well over an hour. The “15 minute” aye/nay vote started at 10:06 a.m. and magically lasted until almost 11:20 in order to give Democrats enough time to twist arms get the caucus to fall in line. Democrats did ultimately hit their magic number of 216, however, and actually had two votes to spare to adopt the rule.
Less than an hour later, at a little past noon Eastern, the House Rules Committee gaveled in another emergency meeting that was scheduled on short notice in order to pass HR 1808 out of committee and send it on to the House floor.
During that Rules Committee hearing, Rep. Jim McGovern claimed in one breath that the bill must pass with urgency in order to “save lives,” while pointing out that Republicans have had more than 500 days to read the text of HR 1808. If this bill is truly about public safety, why did Democrats wait more than a year before bringing the bill to the floor of the House for a vote? I know I’ve said it before but the push for a gun ban this week is about saving Democratic seats, not saving any lives.
Republicans in the Rules Committee unanimously opposed approving HR 1808, but with Democrats in the majority on the committee the objections about a “ultimately pointless political exercise” fell on deaf ears and the measure was sent to the House floor just after 1:30 p.m. Eastern. Shortly before 2 p.m. the House took up the motion to consider HR 1808, with Democratic Rep. Jim McGovern leading the debate for Democrats.
McGovern was quick to say that this bill is not “taking away anyone’s guns”, but moments later declared that people don’t have the right to own the firearms banned under HR 1808. That begs the question; if Democrats don’t believe that anyone should own these types of firearms, why aren’t they adopting Joe Biden’s campaign plan to require existing owners of AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles to either hand them over to the government or register them under the National Firearms Act?
The honest answer is that Pelosi and House Democratic leadership were unsure of support for the ban as late as Thursday afternoon, and if the bill actually required existing owners to give up their guns it likely would’ve drawn enough opposition from embattled Democrats running for re-election in close districts that it would have failed. Those who voted in favor of this bill aren’t going to be satisfied with what passed the House today. This is an intermediate step, not an end goal.
Still, there was an obvious contradiction for Democrats with comments from representatives like this from Jerry Nadler:
Then there was North Carolina’s Deborah Ross, who started out her statement in support of the ban by declaring it “doesn’t take away anyone’s guns” before saying seconds later that no one should be able to own them without “specialized training.” The whole thrust of the Democrats’ arguments is about “saving lives” and “no one needs to own these guns” while also patting themselves on the back and trying to reassure gun owners that they can keep their “weapons of war.”
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