The media tells us VP Kamala Harris’ newly-minted running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D-MN), has a folksy demeanor.
“I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” Waltz said in a recently unearthed 2018 clip.
Except he never carried AR-15s - semiautomatic rifles frequently mischaracterized as “weapons of war” - in combat. Even CNN shot down this claim from Walz.
Walz is an acceptable kind of gun owner and hunter to progressives because he capitulates to gun confiscation and refuses to defend all forms of hunting–including highly-regulated wolf management.
So the guy goes pheasant hunting with shotguns and wears blaze orange? And he signs National Hunting and Fishing Day proclamations every year. Hooray for doing the bare minimum! I - and millions of Americans - fish, hunt, and shoot guns too. But how does Waltz act beyond the bluster and “cool” midwestern dad in a camo hat persona?
Walz can say he’s a Second Amendment supporter all he wants, but he’s yet to issue a proclamation for the annual National Shooting Sports Month celebration. This is the biggest Second Amendment celebration of the year.
He, however, supports and enacts policies that undermine our gun rights and ultimately conservation, since excise taxes from guns and ammunition are responsible for funding the Pittman-Robertson Act. Last year, he signed a bill to enact radical red flag and universal background check laws that aren’t common sensical. These policies excite his gun control buddies, but aren’t an effective way to reduce violent crime.
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Red flag laws don’t respect due process rights, and can be weaponized by aggravated family or community members. Innocent people have died in Maryland. It’s not working in Indiana. And even a family member of a Maine shooting victim warned against rushing these dubious laws, stating, “I am disturbed that some members of the Maine Legislature have seized the opportunity to nefariously use the Oct. 25 tragedy for a political end…It's my personal opinion that this was rushed.”
Regarding universal background checks, the RAND Center concluded “evidence that these laws may reduce firearm homicides is limited.” And as constitutional lawyer David Kopel notes, “Although universal background checks may sound appealing, the private sale of guns between strangers is a small percentage of overall gun sales. Worse, the background check bills are written so broadly that they would turn most gun owners into criminals for innocent acts — such as letting one’s sister borrow a gun for an afternoon of target shooting.”
Minnesota got $28 million in Fiscal Year 2024 from the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Wildlife Restoration Program. Since he supports “common sense” gun control, he should return that money back to Washington, D.C., and put his money where his mouth is.
What do Minnesota’s sportsmen and women think of Walz? They aren’t huge fans of him.
Last year, the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association (MDHA) voted to unanimously pull out of the Governor’s Deer Hunter Open over his support of gun control and forced reintroduction of wolves. MDHA, mind you, has been an original sponsor of the event since 2002 and has operated since 1980.
“Since its inception in 2002, the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association, along with the DNR and Explore Minnesota, has been an organizing partner of the Governor’s Deer Opener. While this is a great event, designed to celebrate the pastime that we all love and cherish, MDHA will not be participating this year. In a unanimous decision, our Executive Board voted not to support this year’s Governor’s Opener due to continued attempts to ban wolf hunting and anti-gun legislation within the state, which are in direct opposition to our mission,” MDHA wrote in a May 2023 statementon its Facebook page. “Until our Governor represents the interests of wild deer and deer hunters around the state, we cannot, in good conscience, support the 2023 event. We encourage you to still celebrate this exciting time of year, we know we will be. We will continue to review our position on our support of the Governor's Deer Opener in future years.”
Will a camo hat emblazoned with a Harris-Walz logo appeal to the majority of hunters and gun owners? According to Axios, the camo hat is a “new status symbol for D.C. liberals”– not actual hunters and gun owners outside the Beltway.
The hook and bullet crowd leans conservative and puts the Second Amendment on equal footing with conservation. But they’re becoming increasingly apathetic in decisive swing states. This is a constituency people shouldn’t take for granted.
Governor Walz may tout sportsman bonafides, but he doesn’t represent our interests when it matters. He doesn’t speak for me and millions of sportsmen and women across the U.S.
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