Fox News Sunday tried to spread the lie that Democrats are coming to take away guns and Tim Walz shut it down.
On Fox News Sunday, Shannon Bream asked about the government taking away guns and conducting warrantless searches of the homes of gun owners and Tim Walz replied:
No one is talking about that. I was with my guns yesterday out pheasant hunting with my friends, many of them conservatives, many of them conservative on this. And I just want to be clear on this, the NRA is an organization that I grew up with, was about gun safety. There has been a dramatic shift. I don’t think anybody can argue that, where the NRA went. Especially on things that we can’t even do research on gun violence. And I’ve made it clear that sitting with the Sandy Hook parents, sitting with some of these kids who were in schools where there were school shootings, and having friends that were around these things, had a profound impact on me.
But look, I will defend the Second Amendment, and there’s nothing that we’re proposing, whether it’s extreme-risk protection orders or background checks, that will stop you from owning that. And I think we’re talking about things like trigger locks and things that responsible gun owners do anyway. So look, this is a red herring issue, that we can own guns, protect the Second Amendment, and then our first responsibility is protect our children in society. And I know we can do that. I think this idea of just brushing it off saying, âWell, this is just the way things are,â why would we not research what’s causing this? Why would the gun manufacturers oppose understanding exactly why America is so different than other gun owning countries.
So look, no one’s coming for your guns. I continue to buy them. The Vice President is a gun owner. So many of your viewers are but they also are concerned that we don’t need to see our children shot in schoolsâ¦The thing is, Shannon, that I’m most concerned with though is, like guns in homes. The number one thing is children getting a gun and shooting themselves. We do education campaigns here. We give out free gun locks. 40,000 of these things at the state fair a couple years ago. Those are legal governors saying, You’re right. We can do some of these thingsâ¦â
The point has arrived in the campaign where conservative media starts lying about Democrats taking away guns. Democrats have no interest in taking guns away from citizens who are not looking to become mass shooters or commit crimes with their guns.
The problem as Gov. Walz referenced is mass shootings and school shootings. Democrats want to get dangerous weapons of war out of the hands of mass shooters, which sounds a lot more reasonable that what Bream tried to frame as gun confiscation and warrantless gun inspections.
Tim Walz handled these questions perfectly and gave Fox no ground for right wing Second Amendment fearmongering.
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Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association