Op-Ed: Going to Bat Against the Swamp

President Biden and Congressional Democrats, in their efforts to enact gun control, have run into a problem: you. The vast majority of Americans support the 2nd Amendment, and oppose radical gun control measures that erode those rights. Just this week, after considerable criticism from Republicans in Congress and Americans of all stripes, the president withdrew David Chipman as his nominee to lead ATF. President Biden and Democrats in Congress are starting to realize that in order to pass their extreme gun control agenda, they cannot do so with the help of the American people. Instead, they will rely on the federal bureaucracy and their Democratic allies in Congress to slowly but gradually eliminate your 2nd Amendment rights.

If you are familiar with baseball, you might recognize this new strategy as “small ball” — where a team forgoes flashy home runs and instead focuses on small things like making solid contact, smart baserunning, and good defense. The goal is the same — to win — but through an incremental approach. Throughout his presidency, and with the support of Democrats in Congress, President Biden has undertaken a similar strategy. Through bureaucratic rules, executive orders, and so-called “common sense” legislation, the president and Democrats are attempting to undermine Americans’ gun rights by chipping away at long standing 2nd Amendment protections. This has not gone without response from myself and my House Republican colleagues.

When the Biden Administration threatened to ban stabilizing braces, a common gun accessory widely used by disabled vets who shoot recreationally, I called on Acting ATF Director Marvin Richardson to reverse course and cosponsored H.R.3823, the Protecting Individual Sovereignty Through Our Laws Act (PISTOL Act), to permanently fix this and stop the possible criminalization of otherwise-legal gun owners. I signed on to be an original sponsor of H.R.3820, the Firearm Due Process Protection Act, when the Biden Administration wanted to use the federal bureaucracy to deprive some Americans of their constitutional rights without offering any recourse. The bill provides gun owners with the ability to seek a court judgement in order to ensure the right to own a firearm is protected when wrongfully denied due to federal background checks. Most recently, I joined 175 Republicans on a Congressional amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court to challenge New York’s heavily restrictive licensing regulations targeted at law-abiding gun owners.

The biggest threats to the 2nd Amendment today don’t often make the news and grab the flashy headlines, but nevertheless further erode our 2nd Amendment rights. Some of the gun control measures we face today might not elicit the uproar that policies like gun confiscation programs do, but once codified into law by Congress or bureaucratic rule, they build a legal foundation that future administrations can use to further exert the federal government’s power. As is the case in the “boiling frog” parable, the new strategy undertaken by President Joe Biden and Democrats threatens to slowly turn up the temperature on millions of legal gun owners. We need to be more diligent than ever and act now to protect the 2nd Amendment, before our rights get boiled over.

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