U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “U.S. Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) made public what had been expected and announced, a challenge to Florida Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio ahead of the 2022 elections,” National Shooting Sports Foundation Senior Vice President and General Counsel Larry Keane noted Friday. “The very first question at the very first debate needs to be this:
“Has your stolen service weapon been found? Can you say with certainty your stolen service weapon has not been used in a crime, or worse to injure someone?”
That’s a good question and one Deming should be asked often, not that we can expect a Democrat-championing media to embarrass its challenger of choice. That said, she’s a gun-grabber of the first order, and worse than that, an “Only One” trading in on her past “law enforcement” credentials to swindle and mandate her countrymen out of their right to keep and bear arms.
“I served in law enforcement for 27 years, four years of that as the Chief of Police for the Orlando Police Department,” Demings related to readers in a USA Today opinion piece. “Before being elected to Congress I spent most of my adult life wearing a uniform, a badge, and carrying a gun. I took an oath to protect the innocent from dangerous people.”
Actually, the oath she took was to “support the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Florida.” Instead, she has devoted much of her newfound political power to the Democrat-driven citizen disarmament agenda and trying to hide it behind her huge “but.”
So it figures a politically powerful person who doesn’t need to respect the Second Amendment would feel equally confident about trashing the First. Demings used the threat of legal action to try and silence a critic who called her job performance as he saw it:
“Orlando police Chief Val Demings is threatening to sue one of her critics for creating a Web site that criticizes her performance. Valdemings.com is run by Ezell ‘Easy’ Harris, a frequent critic of Demings’, and contains a disclaimer stating the chief has no association with the site … Harris on Saturday said he has no intention of removing the site, which prominently features a report on the theft of Demings’ 9 mm service weapon, which was stolen from her agency sport utility vehicle … ‘If someone didn’t tip the Orlando Sentinel about this gun, we probably wouldn’t even know it happened,’ Harris said. ‘I thought it was wrong that the public didn’t know.’”
Harris had also reported on a stolen police car, Demings’ sheriff husband, a female supervisor reportedly getting away with sexual harassment, and “the Police Department’s handling of a 2007 case in which an officer was accused of pushing a woman down [the] stairs at the now-defunct Club Paris downtown.”
No worries. Demings has taken over the domain and it’s now a campaign site saying only good things about her in the hopes of inspiring contributions to get even more political power.
Speaking of which, Keane tells us “the contrast couldn’t be more obvious” between Demings and the incumbent she hopes to replace, Marco Rubio.
“Sen. Rubio co-sponsored S. 1522, the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, and scored an A+ on NSSF’s 2020 Senate Report Card,” he reminds us.
It would help if we knew the specific criteria for that grade. NRA gives Rubio top marks as well, despite his support for red flags and blacklists.
That’s not saying Rubio hasn’t voted “right” much of the time and that an overt Democrat gun-grabber wouldn’t have voted “worse.” But the thing about that is, his (and other Republiquislings’) actions on another issue will ultimately undo and reverse every one of those “good” votes:
“Republican Senators Marco Rubio, John Cornyn, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis will attend a Thursday ‘summit’ meeting hosted by the ‘American Business Immigration Coalition,’ a pro-amnesty group consisting of big business donors, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as the George Soros-funded United We Dream organization.”
We have the data and history to know where that will lead, particularly after Joe Biden fast-tracks millions of illegals on his superhighway to citizenship. Not that NRA or NSSF or any other prominent national or state “gun advocacy” group dares talk about that. They’re afraid the cultural Marxists will call them names. So instead they defer to the “single issue” misdirection if they acknowledge the reality at all. That’s nonsense, of course, because anything that threatens the right to keep and bear arms IS part of the single issue.
By treating their members and followers to shallow happy talk about “staunch defenders of our rights” instead of reality, squishes like Rubio are not only given a pass, they’re rewarded, and the chances of a real defender of the right to keep and bear arms successfully mounting a primary challenge are effectively torpedoed. That practically guarantees a continuation of “the swamp” and the endless cycle of promises and betrayals.
We get that Rubio is no Demings and we get that a Senate majority is crucial if there is to be any hope for gun owners of legislative or judicial relief. It’s past time “gun rights leaders” treated their members to the whole truth, warts and all, like adults. That way, choices can be informed, and candidates can be pressured to live up to their promises — if not out of principle then at least out of self-interest and political survival.
Every time I see some weasel-worded fundraising solicitation telling me a candidate I wouldn’t give a “C” to is a true friend and Second Amendment champion, a line by the character “Fletcher” from The Outlaw Josey Wales comes to mind.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
