After the horrific shooting in Uvalde, Texas last year with the appalling failure of district, local, and state police, the usual outcry went up for more gun control. The far-left gun control industry lives for these moments, seeing them as ideal opportunities to dance in the blood of innocent victims — children are always best — and call for the passage of gun control laws to finally do something about “gun violence.”
Connecticut’s Chris Murphy, one of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex’s most dedicated boosters, took to the Senate floor and pleaded with his fellow legislators to finally “solve a problem as existential” as civilian gun ownership. “Why are we here, if not to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook has gone through? What Uvalde is going through,” he wondered aloud.
But I’m here on this floor to beg, to literally get down on my hands and knees and beg my colleagues. Find a path forward here. Work with us to find a way to pass laws that make this less likely.
I understand that my Republican colleagues will not agree to everything that I may support, but there is a common denominator that we can find. There is a place where we can achieve agreement, that may not guarantee that America never ever again sees a mass shooting.
That may not overnight cut in half the number of murders that happen in America. It will not solve the problem of American violence by itself. But by doing something, we at least stop sending this quiet message of endorsement to these killers whose brains are breaking. Who see the highest levels of government doing nothing, shooting after shooting.
Texas’s John Cornyn heard Murphy’s speech and decided that he was the kind of Republican who could work with Murphy to finally do something.
What they ultimately did was to partner up, write, and pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
Through his willingness to work with Murphy and co-sponsor the legislation, Cornyn also gave political cover to a handful of other liberal and middle-of-the-road Republicans to get back the bill and pass the first federal gun control legislation in almost three decades.
There was much rejoicing by all of the usual suspects when Joe Biden signed the BSCA into law.
“While this bill doesn’t do everything I want, it does include actions I’ve long called for that are going to save lives,” Biden said just before signing the measure.
“Today, we say more than enough. We say more than enough,” he added. “At a time when it seems impossible to get anything done in Washington, we are doing something consequential.”
Consequential indeed. Just not in the way the credulous Senator from Texas thought. As Cornyn himself proudly announced . . .
So often around here people do things and say things not with the intention of actually passing legislation but with the intention of making a political statement or messaging. That’s not what we’re doing here.
Law-abiding gun owners are not the problem. That was a red line for me. Unless a person is adjudicated mentally ill or is a violent criminal, no one’s Second Amendment rights will be impacted by this legislation. Period.
This bill does, however, include important targeted reforms, complete with robust due process protections that I believe, in the end, will keep our children and our communities safe while respecting Second Amendment rights.
Cornyn sold his compromise claiming that the BSCA would provide support for state crisis intervention orders (whatever the hell that means), “invest” in children and family mental health services, protect victims of domestic violence, fund school safety initiatives, among other bullet points.
But what has the BSCA really done? What else was in the bill that Cornyn and nine other Republican Senators voted for? A bill Murphy ludicrously claimed would “save thousands of lives?”
A lot, as it turns out. As we pointed out at the time, the BSCA that Cornyn made possible was an anti-gun Democrat’s dream. Like most federal legislation, it was a Christmas tree from which to hang spending to shovel federal tax dollars to favored constituent groups and gun control supporters.
But the BSCA is much more than just pork. The Biden administration has taken full advantage of its language to push restrictions on legal firearm purchases, strong-arm states into enacting “red flag” confiscation laws and pull federal funding from schools that were retrograde enough to still have hunting and archery programs.
While Cornyn was full of happy talk of bipartisanship and finally getting things done in our nation’s capital, the folks back home weren’t buying the steaming load of longhorn manure wrapped in across-the-aisle compromise that Cornyn was trying to sell them.
US Sen John Cornyn gets viciously booed during much of his speech here at the Republican Party of Texas Convention. Here’s his closing remarks and the cascade of boos. pic.twitter.com/m2Hua9WdrV
— Jeremy Wallace (@JeremySWallace) June 17, 2022
Not that he cared all that much. He knew good and well that he wouldn’t have to go before the voters again until 2026. Four-plus years is an eternity in politics.
In the mean time, the FBI has used the “enhanced background check” language of the BSCA to institute a de facto 10-day waiting period on firearms purchased by adults under age 21.
Under cover of the BSCA, Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice has used federal dollars to “strong-arm” states into passing “red flag” laws.
“The Department of Justice appears to have weaponized the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to illegally fund ineligible ‘red flag’ laws and bribe pro-gun states into passing gun confiscation laws,” … lawmakers wrote.
You don’t say.
The latest revelation of the BSCA being a useful tool in the Biden administration’s ongoing War on Guns™ is withholding federal education funding from schools with hunting and archery programs.
This appears to be just another manifestation of Joe Biden’s crusade against anything promoting a positive approach to firearms, especially if it is taught in elementary and secondary schools, where young people can learn about genuine firearms safety, and perhaps prevent a tragedy.
Cornyn, for his part, is shocked, SHOCKED — and don’t forget that he’s OUTRAGED — that the most anti-gun administration in American history would use the language of the gun control bill he wrote and voted for to attack the gun rights of law-abiding Americans.
In all three cases, he — along with some of the other simps who backed the BSCA— has written letters (very sternly worded, no doubt) expressing his very deep concern over how his gun control bill is being (ab)used by the executive branch.
“We were alarmed to learn recently that the Department of Education has misinterpreted the BCSA to require the defunding of certain longstanding educational and enrichment programs — specifically, archery and hunter education classes — for thousands of children, who rely on these programs to develop life skills, learn firearm safety and build self-esteem,” Cornyn and [Senator Thom] Tillis wrote to [Education Secretary Miguel]Cardona.
“The Department mistakenly believes that the BSCA precludes funding these enrichment programs,” they continued. “Such an interpretation contradicts congressional intent and the text of the BSCA.”
Cornyn and Tillis can’t possibly be so deluded as to believe their expression of displeasure with a Biden administration functionary will carry any weight. Still, they have to go through the kabuki exercise of issuing strongly worded missives to get it on the record that they’re not happy about the bill they voted for being used to limit gun rights, just as many predicted it would.
Cornyn, Tillis and the rest have no expectation at all that the Biden administration will change how it chooses to interpret the BSCA short of being sued and an injunction being issued.
So Cornyn and his gullible, useful idiot GOP confederates who were convinced to compromise and get on board with Democrats to pass this abomination will be relegated to issuing bewildered expressions of displeasure as ever more creative uses of the BSCA are revealed as time marches on.
Cornyn’s apparently betting that no one in Texas will remember or care enough in 2026 for his gun rights capitulation to hurt him significantly. Besides, who are the voters in Lubbock, Amarillo, Wichita Falls, and Abilene going to vote for…Beto O’Rourke or whatever clone of him Texas Dems recruit to challenge the incumbent?
In the mean time, if Cornyn actually thought that reaching across the aisle and throwing in with his political opponents to finally do something would buy him any respect or good will from the Dems or the media, he’s dumber than even we thought. Anti-gun Democrats will literally never be satisfied until Americans are disarmed. No incremental steps that can make it through a closely divided Congress will ever be enough for them, as Democrat leaders have made abundantly clear.
All Cornyn accomplished by jumping into bed with Chris Murphy and his kind was to reveal his weakness and antagonize the base back home. Senate Democrats used the issue to make the GOP rubes self-identify and Cornyn eagerly stepped forward and raised his hand.
Just as Joe Manchin stupidly caved to Chuck Schumer on the laughable “Inflation Reduction Act,” (the dupe from West Virginia expressed just as much outraged as Cornyn is now by what the administration did after that monstrosity became law), the Dems knew a mark when they saw one. They took full advantage of a sucker like Cornyn and rolled him. They used him like a $10 hooker and then tossed to the curb.
That should be a lesson for Republicans the next time a high profile shooting once again raises the cry for more gun control, but the GOP isn’t known as The Stupid Party for nothing.