Republican presidential candidate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee declared, “Israel has shown more good sense than the Americans have when it comes to protecting their citizens” and argued that none of President Obama’s gun control proposals would have prevented mass shootings on Saturday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel.
Huckabee stated [relevant remarks begin around 1:50] that the criticisms of Republicans who propose building a border wall and not allowing in Syrian refugees, like Israel has done, are “because of the idiocy of many of our left-wing politicians. They just are completely oblivious to reality. I have flown in an helicopter the entire length of the Israeli security wall from one end to the other. The year before that wall was built, there were 1,000 suicide bombers a year that were getting into Israel, killing children, blowing up school buses, blowing up cafes. The year after that wall was built, there were zero suicide bombers. It was simply a matter of protecting the innocent people, who didn’t deserve to every day go to coffee, and wonder whether they were going to be blown up by a suicide bomber. Israel has shown more good sense than the Americans have when it comes to protecting their citizens.”
Huckabee also weighed in on al-Shabaab using fellow GOP candidate Donald Trump in a recruiting video, saying, “We need to understand we are at war with radical Islam, and they’re going to use any tool they can to recruit. … But it doesn’t mean that one candidate is more susceptible to outraging them, because the fact is, and I’ve said this so many times, these are not people you can sit down and reason with or rationalize with.”
Huckabee added that President Obama’s planned executive action on gun control is “a total ruse. This is classic Obama. It’s the slight of hand. When he leaves office. he needs to start a magic show, because he’s got his trick going on in one hand, while he’s calling attention to the other. Not one of his proposals would have prevented Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Aurora, all of these terrible acts of violence that he says he wants to stop. Not one of them would have been changed as a result of his proposals. He keeps talking about things like the gun show loophole. There is no gun show loophole. It simply doesn’t exist. That is one of the great myths. And the fact is, if he’s really serious about curbing gun violence, keep in mind there are two common denominators in these attacks. One, they’re in gun-free zones. And two, it involves mental illness. Neither of these are his target. He’s simply going after people who want to protect themselves from crazy people and from those who would take a gun and shoot us. And I think he’s got the total wrong approach to this. Gun owners, who are legal and responsible, are there to protect themselves, because they don’t want to wait helplessly for the cops to arrive 20 minutes later. And I don’t know why he seems to create these false straw men and go after them, but that’s his motive. All I can say is, I can’t wait for this next year to be over. His presidency needs to come to a conclusion.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett