Is gun control on the table with COVID legislation?

By Michael Hammond
GOA Legislative Counsel

The news on efforts to add anti-gun baubles to the Coronavirus legislation is, overall, good!

Currently, Senate Democrats are blocking a bill to add $250 billion in small business relief — in an effort to tack some of their liberal agenda onto the COVID relief bill.

We know that the secrecy and confusion surrounding this legislation has produced a massive amount of conflicting and, in some cases, inaccurate information.

Here is our best assessment about what is happening.

Not on the Table

There was a lot of speculation that a comprehensive gun control bill would be added the coronavirus relief.

This would include legislation like H.R. 5717, which contains semi-automatic bans, universal gun registries, and widespread gun confiscation.

This bill lacked the votes to pass the Senate — and could have passed the Democrat House only if Nancy Pelosi forced her vulnerable freshman to “walk the plank.”

Had that happened, it’s a near-certainty that Democrats would have lost control of the House in November.

While no bad outcome is impossible, so long as Congress is in session, we’re comfortable that the main battlefront centers around other anti-gun bills.

Probably Off the Table

The third Coronavirus bill contained $45 million for domestic violence shelters and coalitions and $2 for the national domestic violence hotline.

Building on that, 115 anti-gun House Representatives wrote a letter on April 9 that pushes for the addition of language similar to H.R. 1585 — to be added to Phase 4 of the Coronavirus legislation.

You may remember that H.R. 1585 was passed by the House last year, and it was chock full of gun control — including “red flag” middle of the night gun confiscation raids on gun owners’ homes.

It also contained language allowing anyone you had ever dated to strip you of your gun rights by obtaining a restraining order against you.

A separate letter signed by anti-gun zealot Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) also urged more money for “sexual assault and domestic violence programs.”

But this week, we received word from Capitol Hill insiders that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and other Senate GOP leaders had blocked the plan to stick gun control from H.R. 1585 onto the relief bill.

“You don’t pop the cork until they’ve banged the gavel,” but we are cautiously optimistic that we are in a good place with respect to any effort to add gun control to the successive Coronavirus bills.

And if we win this battle, this will presumably be the last chance for gun control advocates before the November elections.

Still in Play

This leaves Democrats’ efforts to manipulate the election process to their advantage.

In particular, Pelosi and Schumer are pushing legislation to expand California’s voter-fraud system to the other 49 states.

In addition to ballot harvesting — where liberal activists bring carloads of completed ballots to the election station — California’s mail-in voting allows tens of thousands of ballots of questionable authenticity to arrive in the mail up to a week after the election.

In Orange County, California, four GOP legislators in solid-red districts lost their seats last year as a result of these election tricks.

Republican incumbents who were well-ahead on election night watched their leads vanish as “just enough” mail-in ballots to defeat them turned up at polling places during the ensuing week.

Click here and take action to encourage Senate Republicans to REJECT every attempt by gun grabbers to sneak mail-in ballots into the COVID-19 bill!

Your taking action will make a huge difference!

The bottom line? It looks like we’re winning, but we urge you to keep fighting to keep extrinsic anti-gun issues off the Coronavirus bills.

If Democrats want to block aid to sick people and sick businesses, they can take that intransigence with them on election day — and see how the American people feel about politicians who play games in an epidemic.