Conservatives Embracing Tulsi Gabbard Ignore Her Totalitarian Demands on Guns

March 10, 2021
By David Codrea

“Vote the wrong way and you are a jihadi …and we’re going to treat you the way we treated those radicals after 9/11, the way we treated Bin Laden,” Tucker Carlson observed on his Fox News program, decrying the way a combination of Democrats in Congress, the media, and Big Tech are effectively turning American into a police state. “But nobody seems to notice or care.

“One who does notice and cares quite a bit, one of the only Democrats willing to stand up and oppose this transparently fascist purge — that is what it is — is Tulsi Gabbard, the former Member of Congress from Hawaii,” Carlson asserted.

“The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed the Capitol,” Gabbard declared in an ensuing video clip.

Powerful words. They’re inarguably right on.

“[T]he very first thing that any President does after they’ve gotten elected, any Member of Congress and every one of us who has served in the military is we take an oath and we swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Gabbard explained. “The reason that this is the first thing that we do is because our Constitution is the foundation of this country and who we are. It is what guarantees us our civil liberties, our freedoms that are endowed to us, not by any man or person in government, but are endowed to us by our Creator, and so this is something that we must all unite around.”

That sounds exactly like something the people I Iook to for leadership and guidance would promote. Carlson was so impressed he closed out the segment telling Gabbard the reason Democrat leadership tried to subvert her presidential bid was “because you’re defending the basic institutions of our country and I appreciate you doing it on this show.”

Other “conservative” news outlets also jumped on the Gabbard bandwagon, raising other policy differences she had with the party.

“Democrat Tulsi Gabbard trashed her own party … over the Democratic Party’s new push for a genderless agenda in the U.S. House of Representatives,” The Blaze reported, citing another Gabbard appearance on Carlson’s show.

“It’s the height of hypocrisy for people who claim to be the champions of rights for women to deny the very biological existence of women,” Gabbard insisted. “It’s mind-blowing because it shows just how out of touch with reality and the struggles of everyday Americans people in Congress are.”

“The reality is that we do not have a nation if we don’t have borders,” Gabbard told Breitbart News, which was quick to point out her differences with the Democrat establishment to its readers. “It’s a false choice for people to say you’re anti-immigrant if you support secure borders. That’s just not the case.”

We could go on, but the point is made: “Conservative” media outlets are happy to bring their viewers and readers statements from Gabbard they can agree with, and then form positive opinions that she’s somehow a “good Democrat.” No doubt she had made some declarations we can all agree with, but there’s one other common factor all such stories seem to share:

None of them also reveal that she is a citizen disarmament extremist.

“Tulsi has a consistent record of advocating for sensible gun control,” a 2018 campaign statement announced. “She has long called for reinstating a federal ban on military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines, requiring comprehensive pre-purchase background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, and making sure that terrorists are not allowed to buy guns. Tulsi has an F-rating from the NRA, a 0% rating by the Hawaii Rifle Association, and a 100% rating by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. She is focused on building bipartisan solutions that can actually be passed into law, rather than using the issue as a partisan political football.”

So much for defending the basic institutions of our country. So much for that oath to the Constitution she so impresses conservative journalists and their audiences with. So much for rights being endowed by our Creator. If she really believes that, how unlawfully and blasphemously presumptuous must she be to deny to you and me human birthrights of ours that she has no claim to?

“Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and I don’t agree much on policy, but we’re lockstep on principles,” Glenn Beck announced on Facebook as the way of introducing his podcast interview of Gabbard (this time the subject was protecting women’s sports from biological male competitors).

He has it exactly backwards. The areas of agreement he and other conservative hosts and writers have with her are absolutely on policy. If they were in lockstep with Gabbard on the principles of a disarmed populace, they’d be echoing her demands for a totalitarian monopoly of violence, the one thing that makes that police state she’s wringing her hands over unopposable.

And it’s not just conservative commentators. Rep. Thomas Massie, arguably one of the strongest allies gun owners have in Congress (with the notable exception of his opposition to Republicans objecting to Joe Biden’s certification as president, thereby helping guarantee an extreme gun-grabber administration) had this to say about Gabbard, who joined him in opposition to the Patriot Act and the privacy-violating surveillance state it enables:

“I’m honored to cosponsor a bill to repeal the Patriot Act with my friend across the aisle @TulsiGabbard.”

New flash, congressman: If they want to disarm you, they’re not your friend.

Afterword

Firearms News Editor Vince DeNiro engaged in a related exchange on LinkedIn with Paul Crespo, President of the Center for American Defense Studies, and Managing Editor of American Defense News, who posted praise for her criticisms of exploitive overreactions to the Capitol mob disturbance “as pretext to enact draconian suppression tactics to quash political opponents.”

VINCENT DENIRO: Tulsi warns of police state yet supports totalitarian and genocidal gun control laws. Why does conservative media continue to ignore this?

PAUL CRESPO: She can be totally right about police state and totally wrong on guns. This post is about her being right.

VINCENT DENIRO: Wrong Paul. Banning guns is one the most important steps in establishing a police state.

DeNiro advises Crespo has not responded at this writing.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a regular featured contributor for Firearms News and AmmoLand Shooting Sports News, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.