Eric Swalwell Declares for 2020 with an Anti-Gun Focused Campaign

Eric Swalwell has announced his intention to run for the White House in the 2020 election, and he’s not only running on his track record of smearing Donald Trump, but also on plans to eviscerate gun rights. He announced his intention to run on the stridently anti-Trump “comedy” show, the Colbert Report. He told Colbert, he sees the country in quicksand.

The 38-year-old Congressman is in his fourth term and has an established anti-gun rights record. In 2014, Republicans were trying to prevent officials from using public money to pass a spate of anti-gun regulations in Washington DC. Swalwell voted against the effort, establishing himself as an anti-gun Democrat. The amendment did ultimately pass in the House with heavy Republican support and some Democrat support.

In 2017, a bill was tabled that guaranteed access to firearms for veterans. Supporters of the bill said that veterans who had been assigned fiduciaries owing to their inability to manage their own finances could be declared mentally incompetent without the word of a judge. Opponents said that the bill would make it too easy for mentally incompetent veterans to obtain weapons. The bill passed, but no thanks to Swalwell, who voted against it.

This year, in Swalwell’s fourth term, he has co-sponsored a bill that would have required that every firearms sale be accompanied by a background check. The law was meant to compel persons engaging in private sales to run a background check on the person they were selling to. This kind of law has been a goal of anti-gun Democrats for many years. It would affect even the gifting of guns to children.

The law did ultimately pass, and Swalwell is counted among those who voted for it. Fortunately, President Trump said that he would veto the bill. But that doesn’t change the fact that Swalwell, who wants to be president in 2020, was for it- just as he has been for every anti-gun law and against every pro-gun law that he laid eyes on.

During his chat with Colbert, Swalwell spent the majority of the time talking about gun violence. He told the eponymous talk show host, “I’ve talked to people who are just like me who are the first in their family to go to college, got a lot of student debt, can’t buy a home, can’t start a business. I’ve talked to kids who sit in their classroom afraid that they’ll be the next victim of gun violence and they see Washington do nothing about it after the moments of silence and they see lawmakers who love their guns more than they love our kids.”

This is a pet peeve of ours. When people blame guns for the fear and paranoia that school children feel, it is as misguided as it is dishonest. The fact is that guns save more lives than they take in this country. Over 70% of all gun-related injuries and deaths (excluding suicide) are the injuries and deaths of would-be perps at the hands of legally armed citizens. Many of these are women successfully defending themselves against criminals.

What’s more, people are killed more often by hands and feet than they are by guns. But you don’t hear anything about banning karate chops. So if children are fearing for their lives in their schools, it’s because of the irresponsible way the media covers shooting stories. They are designed to make children afraid, because Democrats only have a shot at winning elections when people are afraid.

In early April, Swalwell took a cheap shot at Trump’s Attorney General William Barr, saying, Barr was trying to protect the president by turning over a redacted version of the Mueller report. All such reports are redacted when made public to protect the identities of the key people involved in the investigation. But Swalwell, Democrats, and the left-wing media aren’t interested in protecting anyone. Neither were they concerned about the dozens of people whose life savings and careers were wiped out by the Mueller probe.

Swalwell made liberals squeal with glee when he said, “Donald Trump was bold but a lot of what he was bold about was bullsh**t.”

Sadly, we can look forward to a lot more of this sort of thing until Trump inevitably steamrolls Swalwell’s presidential aspirations. If Swalwell even makes it that far—he’s not polling well among the other 20+ Democrats who have also declared for 2020.