Aides to President Donald Trump are being advised to get guns and carry permits amid a growing threat of violence following comments by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and others.
NBC News quoted Waters speaking to reporters over the weekend, saying, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Waters made her comments over the same weekend that White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were refused service at The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, and followed off the premises. Mediaite reports it was also the very weekend on which Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was confronted with screams from “huge” angry men at the Tampa Theatre, forcing her departure.
Now voices as disparate as actor James Woods, law professor John Banzhaf, and Crime Prevention Research Center’s John Lott are advising individuals in the left’s crosshairs to get guns and/or concealed carry permits.
Woods tweeted:
The Washington Examiner quoted professor Banzhaf making a similar argument but addressing it more specifically to aides of Trump. Banzhaf said:
High level officials in the Trump administration, especially if their faces are likely to be recognized by many in the public as a result of appearances on TV, might want to consider applying for a license to carry a concealed weapon in the District of Columbia, and/or other states they frequent, in view of the call by Rep. Maxine Waters for the public to “absolutely harass” these officials in public places, and other recent events indicating the increased danger they are in.
Lott observed, “There are simply not enough police in D.C. or Virginia or Maryland to protect all Trump officials at their homes and when they go out to restaurants. Getting a concealed handgun permit would be helpful to protect themselves and their family.”
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.