In the wake of Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 election, multiple other billionaires and business leaders have expressed interest in running for the nation’s highest office. Among the most high-profile of these potential new outsider politicians is Mark Cuban – the billionaire entrepreneur, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and star of the reality TV show “Shark Tank”.
However, while Cuban’s background may seem very similar to Trump’s, his politics are very different.
To be fair, Mark Cuban is not a far-left progressive. In fact, Cuban said in 2017 that if he did run for President, he would probably run as a Republican. It might be most accurate to describe Cuban as a moderate, though not enough is known about his stances on the issues to really label him accurately.
What we do know, though, is that Cuban’s recent comments on changing the Second Amendment would have many voters very anxious if Cuban did run for office.
In an interview with Andy Serwer from Yahoo Finance, Cuban said, “I would go to change the Second Amendment in ways that people probably wouldn’t expect.” He went on to say, “States have the right to manage the ownership —the purchase, ownership, and management — of guns owned and held within their borders.”
“If you live in a state like Texas, if the law in Texas is open carry, so be it,” Cuban continued. “If you live in Pennsylvania where they are more stringent, and they don’t want you to be able to have a gun other than in your own premises or under lock and key or you have to do a background check, then that’s up to them to decide.”
Taking power away from the federal government and giving more power to the states is a very conservative stance. Updating the Second Amendment in any way, though, is not. On this issue, Cuban’s blend of conservative and liberal agendas is interesting, to say the least.
On the one hand, Cuban was very opposed in his interview to the idea of the federal government confiscating guns or limiting gun ownership in any way.
On the other hand, though, Cuban seemed to have no problem with the idea of state governments controlling gun ownership in any way that they see fit.
So is Cuban’s proposal one that conservatives can get behind, or is it simply gun control with a sugar coating?
While the idea of returning more power to the states is appealing, giving states the power to strip away Constitutional rights is not the way to go about it. Every right found in the Bill of Rights is deemed to be God-given and inalienable.
In other words, these are rights that are not granted by the government and rights that the government cannot take away under any circumstance.
This applies to both state and federal governments alike. In the same way that the Constitution would never allow California, for example, to ignore the First Amendment and imprison people for speaking out against the government, the Constitution does not allow for states to ignore the Second Amendment either.
Cuban, of course, is proposing a change to the Constitution that would indeed make it possible for states to apply the Second Amendment in any way they see fit. But changing the Constitution in any way is a bold and incredibly risky proposal.
Changing the Second Amendment – arguably the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights – is even more concerning still. Even if it is changed in a manner that takes power away from the federal government, it is still an incredibly slippery slope, to say the least.
Mark Cuban has already said numerous times that he would consider running for President under the right circumstances, and the possibility of him running against Trump in 2020 isn’t out of the question.
If Mark Cuban really does want to challenge Trump and run as a Republican, though, to he’s going to have to do much better than proposing radical changes to the Second Amendment.
Cuban’s apparent desire to return more power to the states is a good start, but weaving gun control into that policy is not a winning formula.
