Rev. Raphael Warnock and Sen. Kelly Loeffler. (Photo courtesy of National Shooting Sports Foundation)
December 10, 2020
By Larry Keane
Georgia Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff took part in debates in an attempt to gloss over their gun control agenda and the fact they would be the votes that would usher in President-elect Joe Biden’s radical gun grab agenda.
Despite the theatrics, it didn’t work.
Georgia’s runoff elections on Jan. 5 promise to have monumental impacts on gun owners and Second Amendment rights, including the firearm industry. It is literally up to Georgia voters to send the firewall of Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler to stop Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) from trampling on the Constitution and ushering in a literal gun grab that’s been pushed by the incoming Biden-Harris administration.
That’s clearly not what Georgia or the rest of the nation wants. Americans voted with their wallets when it came to guns in 2020. So far, 19.1 million background checks were conducted for the sale of a firearm, including nearly 7.7 million first-time buyers. That’s the backdrop against which the candidates tried to convince voters their gun rights don’t matter.
Riots versus Safety
Incumbent Republican Sen. Loeffler explained that even while riots ravaged Atlanta, her opponent attacked law enforcement. Atlanta, Ga. saw some of the worst violence earlier this year. Calls to "defund the police" echoed at the same time as private gun sales increased. Georgians were rightly concerned about looting and destruction and a lack of police protection with law enforcement spread thin.
"You know my opponent, radical liberal Raphael Warnock, has called police officers gangsters, thugs, bullies and a threat to our children," Sen. Loeffler said. "When I gave him the chance to apologize at our first debate, he declined."
Rev. Warnock responded by claiming, "The land of the free is the mass incarceration capitol of the world," He didn’t acknowledge the destruction and threat rioters brought to Georgia. Yet, he’s chided law-abiding gun owners from the pulpit for exercising their Second Amendment rights.
The High Stakes for Firearms
Returning later to the topic of the gun rights of Georgians, Sen. Loeffler urged voters to support her to ensure the Second Amendment is protected from attacks by the Biden-Harris administration which has vowed to dismantle the firearm industry.
"They want to take away our guns. They want to tax our guns." She added that Warnock "is their agent of change," to accomplish those goals. "The [Republican] senate is the shock absorber against that agenda," Loeffler said .
Democrat Jon Ossoff, challenging Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue, debated solo earlier in the evening. He has tried to hide his true gun control beliefs from Georgians throughout the campaign. His platform includes a ban on modern sporting rifles (MSRs), limiting standard capacity magazines he knowingly mislabels "large capacity" magazines and instituting gun registration and confiscation schemes supported by the Biden-Harris administration. No surprise that Everytown has endorsed Ossoff.
Sen. Perdue’s campaign manager Ben Fry said Ossoff was "unserious," about the serious issues facing Georgia and the nation. He added of Ossoff's debate performance, "Tonight we witnessed something we didn’t know was possible: a candidate lost a debate against himself."
