Kamala Harris weighs in on guns on her campaign website with the headline "Taking executive action if Republicans continue to cower to the NRA."
Sure, the National Rifle Association, with a reported 5 million members nationwide, is an influential policy group.
But is it really running the Republican Party on gun policy?
How about if I propose a counter-headline?
"Taking action against a culture of death if Democrats continue to cower to Planned Parenthood"?
My guess is if I ask which organization has more political sway, the NRA or Planned Parenthood, many would say the NRA -- probably because of our left-wing media.
But pull up OpenSecrets, the website of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in U.S. politics.
What you will find is that in 2018, the NRA made political contributions of $873,071. Planned Parenthood made political contributions totaling $7,183,139, more than eight times greater than those of the NRA, 99.5 percent of which went to Democratic candidates or to organizations supporting them.
The Center for Responsive Politics ranks Planned Parenthood No. 54 out of 19,225 making political contributions, and the NRA No. 543.
Is it relevant to bring Planned Parenthood into this discussion about guns? Yes.
As I have been arguing all along, we cannot get to an appropriate approach for dealing with guns without considering the culture that produces deranged, detached, violent loners.
Sen. Harris reports on her campaign site, "In 2017, nearly 40,000 people were killed by guns in America."
But also in 2017, 332,757 children were destroyed in the womb at Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
Want to tell me that this third of a million babies who were destroyed, whose heartbeats could have been discernable at six weeks, and who could have felt pain at 20 weeks, were not alive?
For sure the perpetrators of death, most recently in Texas and Ohio, did not see those they murdered as living, breathing human beings created in the image of God.
Yet Harris declares: "We are living through an all-out assault being waged on women's health and reproductive rights. ... States have mandated that women submit to invasive ultrasounds ... and placed onerous and medically unnecessary restrictions on health clinics. ... Their sole purpose is limiting access to abortion."
No. Their sole purpose is protecting innocent unborn life.
Regarding guns, Harris says, "Fine, if you want to go hunting, but we need reasonable gun safety laws." And she says that, as president, she would deal with this through executive order if Congress would not pass legislation within 100 days.
But the Second Amendment, as Sen. Harris should know, is not primarily about going hunting.
According to the Pew Research Center, more than 40 percent of Americans live in a gun-owning household, and the major reason for gun ownership, per 67 percent of respondents, is protection. Only 38 percent say it is hunting.
One of the plaintiffs in the landmark 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, in which the Supreme Court confirmed the right of individuals to own and bear arms, independent of service in a militia, was a black woman. Shelly Parker, from the District of Columbia, wanted to have a gun for protection in her crime-ridden neighborhood where she was threatened by local drug dealers. DC prohibited her from having a gun.
Our Declaration of Independence declares our God-given right to life and liberty. Our Constitution protects these rights.
Kamala Harris wants to use it to violate both.
If we want to solve our gun problem, we need to solve our leadership problem.
Kamala Harris may be drawing large crowds in Iowa, provoking some to think she might be filling Barack Obama's shoes.
But let's recall that President Obama was the first sitting U.S. president to address the national meeting of Planned Parenthood, and he concluded his remarks to the nation's largest abortion provider saying, "God bless you."
Harris needs to be asked about this hypocrisy. Are we fighting for life and liberty, or not?
Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Center for Urban Renewal and Education. Contact her at www.urbancure.org
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