U.S.A. –-(Ammoland.com)- The anti-gun-rights student activist group co-founded by David Hogg, now identified as a survivor of the 2018 Parkland, FL high school shooting, has announced a sweeping gun control agenda that appears to be straight out of the gun ban lobby playbook.
According to Axios.com, the wish list presented by Hogg’s “March for Our Lives” includes the following:
- Ban so-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines.
- Implement a mandatory gun buyback program (considered by some to be a “compensated confiscation” scheme).
- Raise the minimum age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21.
- Create a national licensing and gun registry that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day waiting period before gun purchases are approved.
- Install a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the president.
- Create a “Safety Corps,” similar to the Peace Corps, for gun violence prevention.
- Create community-based programs for suicide prevention, domestic violence and urban violence.
WATCH: David Hogg and Tyah Roberts, March for Our Lives co-founders, discuss their new proposed gun control plan. https://t.co/WPuLIaAPwm pic.twitter.com/0gKvC03jPv
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 21, 2019
But Larry Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told NPR that these recommendations would not only be ineffective in preventing criminals from obtaining firearms, they might not pass constitutional muster.
“You don’t need a license from the government in order to exercise your constitutional right,” Keane said, according to the NPR report.
Hogg and other student leaders may need to brush up on constitutional rights. As defined at Wikipedia, “Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.”
Rights are not government-regulated privileges, nor should they be subject to a public vote, i.e. a popularity contest.
As reported by Axios.com, Hogg tweeted, “We know this seems ambitious given Washington’s apathy to decades of bloodshed in our schools, neighborhoods, and even our houses of worship… Policymakers have failed, so survivors are stepping up. The #PeacePlan is written by the generation that’s only ever known lockdown drills. But we WILL be the last.”
Hogg was all over social media Wednesday, and the reaction from Second Amendment activists was uniform, and derisive. Amy Hunter, spokesperson for the National Rifle Association, told Reuters, “The simple fact remains their proposals and ideas are out of the mainstream and most people will understand their real intent goes beyond what they publicly state.”
In the aftermath of last year’s Valentine’s Day mass shooting at the Florida high school, Hogg and a handful of other students achieved celebrity status, headlining a national protest that brought tens of thousands of people to the streets, demanding strict gun control policies. They quickly drew support from entrenched gun prohibition lobbying organizations.
But do their demands have a chance? They might with the slowly shrinking herd of Democrat presidential hopefuls, all of whom have supported some manner of gun control.
Wednesday evening, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee withdrew from the campaign. Inslee’s campaign never gained traction with its single “climate change” message. Instead, the Associated Press is reporting that Inslee will seek a third term as governor in a state where there is growing resentment toward him and his party’s social policies. While Democrats still have a stranglehold in Seattle and along the I-5 corridor stretching from Bellingham to Olympia, and again around Vancouver on the Columbia River, much of the state is turning bright red over issues including taxes, rampant drug abuse and homelessness, and gun control. Inslee was supposed to be making an announcement about his future plans.
Many taxpayers are also unhappy about the state money he spent campaigning around the country because Washington State Troopers have had to travel with him to provide security. That cost the state millions of dollars and many Seattle Times readers are demanding that his campaign pay that back. They largely saw Inslee’s campaign as a vanity effort.
Inslee’s support for gun control could become a key issue in a third-term run. Two Republican candidates now campaigning for the governor’s office are avowed pro-rights advocates. Ammoland News has profiled both men, State Sen. Phil Fortunato and Republic Police Chief Loren Culp.
Inslee did support two gun control initiatives in recent years, both bankrolled by the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility, a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group.
Initiative 1639, passed by voters last November, raised the age for purchasing a semi-auto rifle to 21 and created a definition of a “semiautomatic assault rifle” that applies to every self-loading rifle that has ever been manufactured. Provisions of the measure are now being challenged in federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association.
RELATED:
All NOT Quiet on the NW Front: Another Pro-2A Candidate for WA Governor
WA Police Chief Who Refused to Enforce Gun Law to Run for Governor
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.