Democrat operative Rahm Emanuel famously said, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste… it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Members of his party have seemingly internalized this mantra, and now embody it in their response to every mass shooting, pushing the same anti-gun agenda in the aftermath regardless of the facts or specifics.
Now, in the wake of a tragic mass shooting at a gay bar in Colorado Springs that left 5 dead and dozens injured, they’re rolling out the same playbook.
Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell tweeted, “If you prioritize access to weapons of war over the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and over any victim of gun violence, you’re not ‘pro-life.’”
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez similarly blamed Republicans for the shooting because they “block even the most common sense gun safety laws.”
If you prioritize access to weapons of war over the lives of the LGBTQ+ community and over any victim of gun violence, you’re not “pro-life” …
— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) November 21, 2022
Progressive activist David Hogg responded to the news of the tragedy by, before issuing any condolences of any kind, tweeting: “Ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.”
Ban assault weapons and high capacity magazines.
— David Hogg ☮️ (@davidhogg111) November 20, 2022
These are just a few examples of many on the Left who responded to the tragedy by immediately pushing their anti-gun agenda before the bodies were even cold or the facts from the incident are even well understood.
First things first, the immediate politicization of national tragedies in pursuit of a partisan agenda is never going to not be gross. But it’s also particularly baseless this time around.
Colorado already has fairly strong gun control laws. The pro-gun-control Giffords Law Center gives the state a “B” on its 2021 scorecard, and says that it ranks 13th out of 50 states for the severity of its restrictions on gun ownership. These laws evidently weren’t enough to stop this tragic attack… perhaps because criminals bent on mass murder aren’t prone to following laws.
Are we really supposed to believe that if a few of the laws on the books were different, this deranged, evil man would’ve just stayed at home and played Sudoku? (Even if guns were banned entirely in Colorado, someone deadset on committing such an atrocity could kill a similar or greater number of people with a vehicle, as we’ve seen in Europe.)
In fact, this sad saga may actually be a failure of gun control. Colorado has a so-called “red flag” gun control law specifically meant to enable the confiscation of firearms from dangerous people to prevent mass shootings. Yet, even though the shooter was reportedly arrested last year for threatening his mother and issuing a bomb threat, the “red flag” law was never utilized against him to prevent the shooting.
So, it’s more than just tone-deaf and classless for Democrats to push an anti-gun agenda in the aftermath of this tragedy. It’s baseless and demagogic.
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