Guns will be the key issue in 2014, good news for the pro-2nd Amendment Republican Party, which has Democrats backed into a corner in an untenable position on gun control.
Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) assault weapons ban has already essentially been defeated without a vote, and the remaining measures Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring to the floor in April–gun trafficking legislation and universal background checks–can also be defeated if Republicans will only follow the example of Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and force Democrats to own gun control.
Cruz forced Feinstein to own the unconstitutional, gun-grabbing aspects of her proposed “assault weapons” ban; shortly after, Harry Reid announced the ban would not be included in Senate Democrat’s gun control proposals.
On March 14, Cruz used rhetorical questions touching on subjects that Americans of every walk of life can understand to deflate the reasoning behind Feinstein’s proposal:
The question that I would post to the Senator from California is, would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment[?] Namely, would she consider it constitutional for congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?
Shortly after Cruz took this approach, it became evident that the assaults weapons ban was going nowhere.
This is the same tactic that Republicans throughout the Senate must take against gun trafficking legislation and especially against the call for universal background checks.
Universal background checks are insidious, and the legislation the Senate is considering in April will not only force even secondary gun sales to be done through the auspices of a government representative with a Federal Firearm Licence but will also ban private gun sales and create a national gun registry.
This means it will bar grandpas from passing their favorite rifle to their grandsons and will require the government to create a list of every gun owner and every gun owned in America in order to be enforceable.
Universal background check legislation has made it this deep into the legislative process for one reason only–namely, because these implications have not been explained to the American people. Republicans need to explain these dangers and force Democrats to own gun control in 2014.