John Cornyn Tries to Gaslight Conservatives That He Was a Tough Negotiator With Gun-Grabbing Democrats and Not Just a Chump – Opinion

Tuesday saw the Republican Party’s Vichy caucus give in to the natural impulse to applaud people they don’t like or respect (other than conservative voters). Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his support (see Mitch McConnell Shockingly Sells out His Constituents and the Rest of the GOP and Supports Gun Control Legislation) for a gun control “framework” announced by a group of ten senators on Sunday (Today’s Senate ‘Bipartisan Gun Safety’ Proposal Is Just as Bad as You Feared It Would Be).

As I explain in those two posts, there is nothing in the “framework” that will have any impact on gun violence other than hardening schools. The embrace of “Red Flag” laws, opening juvenile records to background checks, and linking mental health clinics to gun violence are all guaranteed to do nothing about gun violence while, simultaneously, doing a great deal of damage. If any recent act by the Senate epitomized Benjamin Franklin’s warning about forsaking essential liberty for a temporary illusion of safety, it is this “framework.”

Desperate to stave off potential blowback, the leader of the Republican half of the “bipartisan” group of senators is now showing us how tough he was.

These ideas were rejected by the bipartisan agreement yesterday on principles of gun-related legislation. Why? Because they knew the bill would fail to get enough votes if it was included. pic.twitter.com/dfrAWmYJM2

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) June 13, 2022

Cornyn misses a crucial concept in negotiation. In a negotiation, both parties get something. When you give up everything and get nothing in return except an agreement, then you’ve surrendered. It was not right for any GOP senators to compromise the rights of Americans in order to get a mention in the Washington Post. For future negotiations to be successful, serious negotiations could have needed a few things from Democrats. For instance, as a condition of granting a vote on this “framework,” Congress could demand that the Department of Justice justify on a quarterly basis any decision not to file federal charges of firearms violations in areas with high gun violence rates and explain any plea bargain seeking less than a maximum sentence for a firearms offense. Additionally, the promise to honour and defend could be made. District of Columbia against HellerIt is the law of land. The latter would cause enough gun-grabber heads to explode that we’d at least get a chance to catch our wind.

Please don’t pay any attention to anything Cornyn and his cronies offer in the way of defense. This “framework” is unnecessary and dangerous. Our senators, in their egotistical kowtow for popularity have made the first steps towards removing Americans’ gun rights.