Virginia Delegate Nick Freitas (R-30) took Democrats to task Friday over gun control, welfare policies, slavery, Jim Crow laws, and opposition to arming teachers for self-defense.
He rose to speak after a gun control deluge from Democrat Delegates, which was combined with a blame-game targeting Republicans.
Freitas would not have it. In fact, he offered a point-by-point rebuttal of the Democrat Party, their gun control aspirations, and the perilous position in which Democrat policies have placed generations of poor Americans and families from all socioeconomic backgrounds.
He introduced his comments on Facebook, writing, “For several days now, some Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates have made public speeches comparing those of us who take our oath to the Constitution seriously, to include the 2nd Amendment, to Nazis and segregationists.”
He then launched into his floor speech, calling out Democrat Delegates who claimed they were in pursuit of “an open and honest debate on gun violence, school shootings, gun control, etc.”
Freitas said:
I’m certainly willing to have that debate, and I think if we were going to look seriously at school shootings and gun control we would analyze things like, ‘Why do all mass shootings seem to take place in gun-free zones’? Wouldn’t it be reasonable to test whether or not … gun-free zones have actually achieved what their … intent is? We would start to look at why most of these shooters come from broken homes. What sort of government policies have actually encouraged broken homes?
He then pointed to left-leaning think tanks that have found the “abortion industry” contributes to broken homes while conservative-leaning think tanks point to the Democrat-sponsored welfare state as perpetuating broken homes.
Freitas then suggested looking around the country at areas with the strictest gun control—mentioning Chicago and Washington, DC, among others. He said, “For some reason, [the gun control] hasn’t seemed to stop the gun violence in those particular areas.”
Freitas made clear that a debate on gun violence and school shootings should also include talk of arming certain teachers to keep students safe. He said, “Not every teacher, but a teacher that is comfortable with it. That is former law enforcement, is former military, that is now in the classroom. Delegate [Kenneth Plum (D-36)] said yesterday that was ridiculous to consider. Why? Is that because the other side of this debate will only accept one ‘solution’ to this problem? And that is tearing apart or gutting the Second Amendment?”
Freitas suggested Republicans have learned they cannot trust Democrats on gun control; that one Democrat-sponsored gun law always leads to another, and another after that, and still another after that.
He said:
I don’t think any of us on this side of the aisle believe you when you say that’s all you want to do. It’ll be bump stocks, it’ll be background checks, then it’ll be a different kind of background checks that register the guns. Then after that it’ll be that we need to ban “assault weapons.” What’s an “assault weapon?” Something that looks scary. Then after that it will be semiautomatic rifles, after that it will be semiautomatic handguns, then it will be revolvers [and] shotguns. Because when the policies fail to produce the results you are promising your constituents, you’ll be back with more reasons on why we have to infringe on Second Amendment rights.
Freitas then took on Democrats who compared Republicans to “segregationalists.” He said, “I just want to remind everybody, that it was not our party that supported slavery, that fought [against] women’s suffrage, that rounded up tens of thousands of Asian-Americans and put them in concentration camps [during World War II], that supported Jim Crow, that supported segregation or supported mass resistance. That wasn’t our party, that was the Democrat Party.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.