Why Do House Democrats Push “Universal” Background Checks When They Admit They Don’t Work?

by Charles C.W. Cooke,

House Judiciary Commission Chair Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.: “Universal background checks” may not work, but they’re a “good first step.”

Unable to contain his excitement at the prospect, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., boasted in February that the federal legislature would be taking a different approach toward the Bill of Rights under new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “A new Congress,” Swalwell promised, “is putting your right to be safe over any other rights.” How far we have come since the days of Patrick Henry! “Give me liberty or give me … comfort?”

The proximate cause of Swalwell’s enthusiasm was the House of Representatives scheduling a hearing to discuss gun control, which, as Swalwell subsequently made clear, would be swiftly followed by the Democrat party in the House gearing up to pass precisely the same set of measures that the Democrat party in the House always tries to pass. Yes, you’ve guessed it: “Universal” background checks are back on the docket, although this time their introduction has been marked by a subtle shift in the supporting language.

Interestingly, the House Democrat leaders refused to let Congressman, Steve Scalise (R-La), famously shot by a crazed Democrat supporter at a baseball practice in June, 2017, participate. Hmmm?

To their boilerplate rhetoric, advocates have begun adding a host of novel caveats: “Universal” background checks, congressional Democrats have explained, represent “a start”; they are, they insist, just “one part of a broader package” of regulations that the new Congress will look at imposing. This, we are told, is the “first step.” Once a panacea against all ills and abuses, the measure has been quietly transmuted into an overture to something even more dramatic.

This shift is an alarming one, certainly. One suspects we may come to long for the era in which the gun control movement tried to hide its radicalism.

More From America’s 1st Freedom: