In the weeks after the Orlando terror attack, Gabby Giffords has been fighting for more gun control, while gays have been fighting for more guns.
The dichotomy could not be more evident: Giffords and her gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions are flying a gay banner in their push for gun control, while gay gun rights groups like the Pink Pistols are literally experiencing exponential growth as a result of their fight to arm more Americans.
On June 24, Giffords and her group begged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to allow an up or down vote on Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) gun control legislation. Instead, McConnell tabled it. He told George Stephanopoulos it was time to focus on the Zika virus.
In a Facebook post intended to pressure McConnell into going their way, Giffords and her gun control group asked McConnell to allow and “up-or-down vote” so they could “see which senators stand up to the gun lobby, and which ones give in.” The whole time, Giffords and her gun control group forgot that they are part of the gun control lobby; a lobby with lots of money — thanks to Michael Bloomberg — but few advocates in the Republican-controlled Senate or the post-Orlando attack gay community.
Even Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) voted against a Democrat-sponsored gun control bill on June 20.
Breitbart News previously reported that gun sales to gays and lesbians skyrocketed following the Orlando attack. And while the recognition of the basic need to defend oneself played a role in that surge, Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos was a clear motivation behind it as well. Speaking just days after the Orlando attack, he urged gays to arm themselves so they can “shoot back” the next time an Islamist launches a determined, deadly attack against them.
But Gabby Giffords and her gun control group are calling for more gun control while flying a gay banner.
Breitbart News also reported that the Pink Pistols — an LGBT gun rights group — saw its membership quadruple inside of two weeks after the Orlando terror attack. This boom in membership followed the Pink Pistols’s strong response to the Orlando terror attack, in which they said: “GUNS did not do this. A human being did this, a dead human being. Our job now is not to demonize the man’s tools, but to condemn his acts and work to prevent such acts in the future.”
Pink Pistols’s spokesperson Gwendolyn Patton went on to point out that the Orlando terror attack perfectly illustrates the need for gays to arm themselves for self-defense.
But Gabby Giffords and her gun control group are calling for more gun control following the Orlando attack.
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.