It’s a real disappointment that false charges, which even a hostile FBI that has been trying to imprison all its political opponents had to drop, derailed the worthy nomination of Congressman Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.
Some are saying that his appointment was 4D chess on Trump’s part, that Gaetz willingly offered himself to serve as a diversion — like General George Patton in 1944, who’d been sidelined for slapping a soldier, pretending to command an army that would invade at Calais so Eisenhower could really land at Normandy. Well maybe. That would be true if we really did pull off a Normandy landing after that.
And it’s not clear that Trump’s second choice, Pam Bondi, represents that. Yes, she’s a solid prosecutor who stands with us on most major issues, who will likely sail through confirmation.
But should she?
Red-Flagging the Bill of Rights
Imagine if the next thing I wrote was, “Because Pam Bondi wants to undermine the 13th Amendment, which outlawed slavery.” Or “Because Pam Bondi doesn’t support the 1st Amendment, guaranteeing free speech and the free exercise of religion.” You’d be alarmed, wouldn’t you? And rightly so.
Pam Bondi does have dubious views about one amendment that is key to our Bill of Rights. In fact, it’s the most important amendment, from a practical point of view: the Second Amendment, which serves as the final enforcement mechanism of all the other amendments.
This is VERY concerning. Pam Bondi is seen here advocating for red flag law — a complete obliteration of due process. Removing natural rights requires a process of adjudication that red flag denies.
pic.twitter.com/lO8YpFGLSM— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) November 22, 2024
Bondi believes that a citizens’ gun rights can and should be suspended without due process of law or the presumption of innocence. That’s what happens via “red flag” laws, as we have documented here before.
No Presumption of Innocence
As Dana Loesch wrote at The Federalist:
The people who report your Twitter account and your Facebook pages because they dislike your opinion want you to trust a government-run system where people can, without serious penalty of law, report you and have your property confiscated before you’re allowed to defend yourself in court weeks, even months, later.
Unpacking that, I explained:
Under Red Flag laws, the burden of proof is not on the government or your accuser. It’s on you, the gun owner. You don’t get a free lawyer, as criminal defendants do. You must pay to fight this seizure of your property. The person who lodged a false accusation against you? He can sit back and relax. The state does his job for him, and there’s no effective penalty he faces for lying. …
This might not be the time for Americans to meekly surrender their weapons to the nice men from the government. But that’s precisely what Red Flag laws would force many Americans to do. Which Americans? People who belong to any of the following groups:
o Men with vengeful ex-girfriends or wives.
o Women with stalkers savvy enough to lodge a false complaint.
o Employers who fired somebody once.
o Trump supporters whose leftist neighbors resent them.
o Homeschoolers whose conformist neighbors think they are “weirdos.”
o Christians or other conservatives who speak up at school board or library meetings against X-rated sex education or drag queen story hours.
o Anyone in America who irritates anyone else for any reason at all.
With Red Flag laws, at a single stroke, the gun-grabbers who want Americans to turn into disarmed, passive subjects of coastal elites will have almost everything they want. They can’t pass laws banning guns wholesale. So they’ll outsource the job to the nosy neighbors, resentful exes, disgruntled ex-employees and frustrated stalkers out there. Those people will confiscate Americans’ guns retail, one false accusation at a time.
The Gospel Implies Gun Rights
As I documented in my book, No Second Amendment, No First, the protection of citizens’ rights to self-defense against crime and tyranny is central to American freedom generally. As James Madison explained, an armed citizenry is the enforcement mechanism for the rest of the Constitution — the last bulwark against a dictatorial government. You know who agreed with Madison? Adolf Hitler, V.I. Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, and every other dictator who arose since the invention of firearms, since each of them moved quickly to seize citizens’ guns.
Even less dystopian regimes that disarm their citizens start trampling their rights. In Britain, citizens face prison time for dissenting from immigration policy. In Australia, authorities planned internment camps for the unvaccinated. Germany forbids homeschooling and seizes custody of children whose parents flout the law. I could go on and on with more examples: The moment the State stops being the least bit afraid of its citizens, they must start to fear the State. The existence of an armed citizenry has acted as a silent, powerful brake on tyranny even under the worst Democratic presidents.
Gun rights are also a logical, necessary implication of the Christian worldview, as theologians made clear during the debates about religious persecution in the wake of the Reformation. As images of God redeemed by Jesus, human beings have the intrinsic right to defend themselves, their families, and their communities — full stop. Caesar has no right to pre-empt that. Saying otherwise is making of Caesar an idol, worshiping the State as a god.
Sadly, Donald Trump himself has in the past expressed support for Red Flag laws, which turn the Second Amendment into a “second class” right. Imagine if some Karen could “red flag” other liberties guaranteed by the Constitution by simply calling the police, and the hapless citizen she’d targeted had to go to court to get them back. Think some woman is voting “unsafely”? Call the cops and red flag her 19th Amendment right. Consider some black citizen a drain on the community? Why not red flag his 13th Amendment right not to be a slave? (I went through the whole Bill of Rights this way in a 2019 thought experiment.)
Populism is a legitimate impulse and a powerful political tool. But when it abandons fundamental principles of freedom to achieve pragmatic ends (virtue-signaling about “gun violence” in this case) it only empowers the Deep State and its managerial minions — who happily would indeed suspend the entire Constitution, as they did during the COVID panic.
Will Bondi’s approval by the GOP Senate be a cakewalk? Not if senators who care about the Constitution such as Rand Paul and Ted Cruz do their jobs. They ought to be asking some very tough questions, and not stop until they get satisfactory answers — or vote to send her packing.
John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.
The post Trump’s New Attorney General Pick Should Face Tough Questions at Confirmation. She Flouts the Second Amendment appeared first on The Stream.
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