RJK Jr. recently used a town hall event in New Hampshire to explain that he’s changed his traditional views on gun control. He said that he has no intention of confiscating guns, as he understands that gun control won’t stop school shootings, SCOTUS has ruled definitively in favor of gun rights, and the drugs that many mass shooters have been on could be the big problem.
That came when a woman at the town hall asked, “We have weapons of mass destruction here, semi-automatic weapons, easily available with little documentation in our own country, and they’re killing children. What will you do to confine semi-automatic weapons to use only by military and law enforcement?”
RFK Jr., much to his credit, gave a thoughtful answer. Rather than emotionally answering one way or the other, he gave a drawn-out answer on his personal beliefs about gun control but why it doesn’t work and why he has no intention of taking away guns from ordinary Americans.
He began by saying that personally, he’s in favor of gun control, but that the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the matter, by which he likely meant Bruen, means that gun control isn’t constitutionally permissible. In his words: “I am not going to take people’s guns away, and I believe in gun control myself. But I know anybody who tells you that we can end the violence to our children that’s going on now by removing people’s guns in at the margin that has been left to us by this very expensive Supreme Court decision is not being truthful with you. So you know, I think just legally because of the of the Supreme Court decision, because of the expansive vision of you that the Supreme Court has taken on the Second Amendment, that it makes it really impossible to actually do anything about it.”
Continuing, he noted that he’s spent a good bit of time around people who grew up with guns and like using and shooting guns. He used that experience to note that he understands why people both like having guns around and see attempts to take them as “an existential threat” to their communities, way of life, and view of America. Further, he added, constant clamoring to take guns from those communities has made America very polarized. He said: “In terms of limiting people’s guns. I also want to say this, you know, I have spent a lot of my time on my life and rural communities in this country. And there is a gun culture in those communities that is closely tied to people’s identities. And so those people that a large group of Americans see it as almost an existential threat. When people in my political party and people like myself, we’re going to take your guns away. And it hasn’t worked. It’s polarized our country more, and it’s made people dig in more, and I’m trying to end the polarization in our country.”
RFK Jr. then took the opportunity to note that at the point where people now want to take guns away, the far more serious problem is the all-out assault on the rights of Americans, particularly the Bill of Rights, saying, “And I, so I think, particularly in this point in history in the last three years in this country, we’ve seen an all-out assault on our Bill of Rights. We’ve seen for the first time the government participating and censoring people’s speech.”
He added that the FBI has been censoring speech on behalf of the Ukrainians and the CIA and FBI pressured Twitter to censor, saying, “There was the you know, the these revelations came out this week that the FBI has been collaborating with the SBU the Ukrainian agency, to censor speech of Americans critical of US policy against the Ukraine. We’ve seen the CIA and the FBI now have had during at least the last two administrations, at portals at Twitter, where they can identify people who are speaking against government policies and silenced them. And so we had these assaults on freedom of speech. We had the government come in and order without any scientific citation without any democratic process of the closure of every church in this country for a year.”
He then gave more and more examples of how the fundamental rights enshrined and protected by the Bill of Rights are under assault from the denizens of the DC Swamp before returning to the main, gun control point.
Particularly, he noted that attacking the Second Amendment right now is crazy and would make people far too polarized to solve the important issues, saying, “And a lot of the people who believe strongly about guns say, ‘Well, the reason I didn’t attack the Second Amendment is because we have our guns, whether you believe that or not.’ And I, you know, I’m not going to take a position on that one way or the other. But going after people’s guns at this point in history, it to me is just going to cause more polarization that made it so that we can’t listen to each other anymore because we get put into these kind of tribal silos where we have to somehow figure out a way to get past.”
He then turned to the question of school shootings and noted that schools are more open to attack than airliners and suggested that SSRIs might be the reason that crazy people are murdering kids en masse all of the sudden, saying: “Oh, you know, my policy is going to be to figure out ways to protect these children. We cannot have any more school shootings. And you know, one of the things even that means protecting schools the same way It protects the airlines, you don’t get shootings on airlines anymore. If we have to do that we have to protect our children. The other thing we need to look at is the other reasons why this may be happening in our country. And, you know, I’ve gotten ridiculed, are saying that we need to look at the issue of the SSRIs. We, but it’s one of the issues . . . There has never been a time in human history when strangers would walk into a room of children and begin shooting people.”
He then reemphasized the SSRI claim, saying, “What happened, you know, I, we had guns when I was a kid, you know, I went to school, where we had a gun club in the school, and kids would come with their rifles to school. And nobody was nobody even imagined somebody would go in that school and start shooting children. There’s other countries that have almost as many guns as we do, like Switzerland, that don’t have school shootings. So what is going on here? The last school shooting in Switzerland was 21 years ago. We have school shootings every 21 hours. One of the things we need to look at our assets, our eyes, there is one study that shows that at least 23% of school shootings have been that the shooter was at the time or but prior or before was on SSRIs. Oh. And if you look at the label, manufacturing, the insert where these drugs they say on homicidal and suicidal ideation and action, so if not insane, to say we should look at this as something changed in our country, it started this and it’s not the guns.”
Watch him here:
Here are @RobertKennedyJr’s statements from last night’s New Hampshire town hall regard the 2nd Amendment.
Some highlights:
-Reiterates he’s “not going to take anyone’s guns away”
-“Anyone who tells you that we can end the violence to our children that’s going on now by… pic.twitter.com/Tie7VisoTd
— Will Fite (@WillFiteForYou) June 24, 2023
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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