Gun grabbers are ubiquitous in the current 21st century Democratic Party and, with effort, one or two gun grabbers can be found in the Republican Party as well.
What follows is a list of four of the most infamous gun grabbers currently serving in elected office. A short overview of the most well-known gun grabbing exploits of each is also provided.
1. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) — Following the heinous December 14, 2012, attack on Sandy Hook Elementary, Senator Feinstein emerged with a gun ban aimed at completely barring the possession of “assault weapons.” On December 17, 2o12, the San Francisco Chronicle announced Feinstein was preparing to introduce a ban on “assault weapons and and big clips, drums or strips of more than 10 bullets” after Adam Lanza used a stolen AR-15 to attack the school. But Breitbart News made clear that Feinstein’s ban was, in fact, so broad as to ban not only “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines” but also numerous shotguns and semiautomatic pistols.
The two greatest insults of this attempted gun grab were: First, the Sandy Hook shooting took place in a gun-free zone. Success for an evil person is not hard to achieve in such a location, even if that evil person is only armed with a five-shot revolver. After all, the would-be victims cannot shoot back, so everything is slanted in the gunman’s favor. Secondly, Feinstein’s history in office is marked by pushes for all the gun control she can get every time the opportunity presents itself. For example, during a 1995 appearance on CBS’s 60 Minutes, Feinstein lamented that the 1994 federal “assault weapons” ban had not included a confiscation clause. She said, “If I could’ve gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States for an outright ban, picking up every one of them — Mr. and Mrs. America turn ’em all in — I would have done it. I could not do that. The votes weren’t here.”
2. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) — Manchin won his Senatorial seat during a special election in 2010. He ran as a pro-gun candidate but soon gravitated toward President Obama, Michael Bloomberg, and other well-known gun grabbers. Following the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary, the formerly-pro-gun Manchin emerged with a plan that punished law-abiding gun owners by requiring an expansion of background checks at point of sale. Machin’s bill would treat private gun sales like retail gun sales, would require background checks for all gun show sales, and would place new regulations on online sales, among other things.
The obvious problem with Manchin’s bill was that Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza did not get this AR-15 via a retail or private sale, nor did he buy it at a gun show or online. Rather, he stole it. Sadly, even Manchin admitted that his gun control bill would not have stopped the Sandy Hook attack from happening, but he pushed it anyway. On April 17, 2013, Manchin’s bill went down in flames on the Senate floor. Manchin has unsuccessfully tried to revive his gun control bill from time to time since its 2013 demise, and even entered the fray of West Virginia state politics to oppose expanding concealed carry in the state. In 2015, Manchin and Moms Demand Action pressured Governor Earl Ray Tomblin (D) into vetoing permitless carry.
3. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — Schumer and gun control are like peanut butter and jelly — they just go together. Schumer supported Manchin’s post-Sandy Hook gun control push and prior to that he supported a ban on “high capacity” ammunition magazines, opposed protecting gun makers from frivolous lawsuits, voted to expand background checks to all gun show sales, and opposed allowing law-abiding citizens to transport a firearm in their baggage aboard an AMTRAK train, according to On the Issues. And in the years since Sandy Hook, Schumer has sought to get around the Republican-controlled Congress by writing letters to persons outside of elected office and asking them to use their positions to push more gun regulation. For example, on October 23, 2015, Schumer wrote a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh, asking that McHugh refuse to purchase firearms for soldiers from gun manufacturers who are not actively working on “smart guns” or complying with gun controls that Congress hasn’t even passed. In other words, with gun control hopes dashed in Congress, Schumer hoped to use the threat of withholding government funds as a means of securing backdoor gun control.
4. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) — Murphy is currently at the forefront when it comes to pushing more gun control on law-abiding U.S. citizens. During a May 2013 appearance on Rachel Maddow Lean Forward, Murphy reacted to the defeat of Senator Manchin’s gun control by saying, “The Second Amendment is not an absolute right, not a God-given right. It has always had conditions upon it like the First Amendment has.” Murphy went on to say the claim that the Founding Fathers wanted U.S. citizens to be armed for purposes of repelling a tyranny is “insane.” Yet Thomas Jefferson clearly explained that Americans have unalienable rights because they are “endowed” with them via “their Creator” and James Madison — with equal clarity — posited gun ownership as an unalienable right, using Federalist 46 to explain that the purpose of gun ownership is to repel a tyranny.
But Murphy is unfazed. He is full steam ahead in pursuit of gun control and that includes his October 2015 push to turn America’s instant background check system into an indefinite background check system — under the guise of ending the non-existent “background check loophole.” Also during 2015, Murphy pushed a bill requiring background checks for all sales at gun shows after John Russell Houser allegedly killed two people with a gun he bought from a licensed dealer in a retail gun store. Houser passed a background check for the gun.
Honorable mention for the list of ‘Most Infamous Gun Grabbers’ goes to President Barack Obama, who has driven gun sales to new heights via the ever-looming threat of more gun control; Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), who pushed gun control alongside Senator Manchin following Sandy Hook; and to Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA-5), who is working feverishly to push gun control in partnership with Gabby Giffords and her husband Mark Kelly. The controls being pushed by Thompson would require every would-be gun buyer to pass the same background check Giffords’s attacker passed to acquire his gun.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.