Guns don’t kill, European-style immigration policies do

Democrats never miss an opportunity to push their dangerous and unconstitutional political agenda on the heels of a national tragedy. It’s time Republicans finally push back by harnessing the attention surrounding the Orlando attack to advance a safe and constitutional agenda that will secure our nation.

Guns are inanimate objects and there is an inalienable right for Americans to own and carry them for protection. Yet, even before the victims of the Orlando terror attack were buried, President Obama made this tragedy about guns. Democrats in the House had the impudence to disrupt a moment of silence in the House chamber with shouts demanding legislation on gun control. Where are the voices demanding legislation about the violent people instead of the object?

The details of this particular attack are still murky. There are a lot of uncanny details leaking out, with some reports suggesting this individual Muslim attacker might have been a disaffected homosexual. But what is clear is that similar to the San Bernardino jihadist, Omar Mateen was an American-born child of Muslim immigrants and had been on the FBI’s radar since 2013. As I noted last week, we are starting to follow in the footsteps of Europe in which the second generation of Muslim immigrants are more volatile than the initial immigrants who are preoccupied with settling in the country. We need to examine the long-term implications of mass-migration from the Middle East. Studying the mistakes of Europe is a good place to begin.

We can start by not exacerbating the problem and taking our existing record immigration numbers and augmenting them with over 100 Syrian immigrants per day. Ironically, it was just last week that a number of Senate Democrats and Republicans were pushing for more visas to be allotted to Afghanis. As I noted at the time, there is no way to properly vet which ones have family members with allegiance to the Taliban. It turns out that Mateen’s father is a Taliban supporter. Even if we can properly vet these refugees, which is unlikely given the speed at which they are being approved, there is no way to vet their children, as evidenced by Mateen, the San Bernardino jihadist, and the Chattanooga shooter.

The notion that we are going to bring in record numbers of Islamic immigrants and then ban guns is as ludicrous as…say…Europe! Won’t we ever learn from their mistakes?

Gun rights is not an elective policy. It is enshrined into our Constitution and is often the only thing protecting ordinary Americans from the long-term concerns of terrorism, a luxury our brethren in Europe don’t have. In fact, in Germany they have run out of pepper spray because of the flood of violence stemming from the Middle Eastern immigrants. They cannot own the amazingly built German handguns that we take for granted in our country.

While gun rights is not an elective policy, immigration – particularly from the Middle East – is absolutely an elective policy.  As I explain in my upcoming book, Stolen Sovereignty, there is no affirmative right for any individual or group of people to immigrate to our country. That Democrats would increase the risk to Americans by exponentially increasing immigration from the Middle East and then disarm everyone else is national suicide.

Democrats want legislation; it’s time we give them legislation. Today, the Senate will be voting on the “must-pass” National Defense Authorization Act. If Mitch McConnell were a real leader, he’d attach an amendment halting Obama’s Syrian refugee program and spend the entire week forcing Democrats to defend it. If he were a bolder leader, he’s join with Speaker Paul Ryan and make a bicameral push placing a halt on visas from countries with a large presence of terrorists. Republicans can put Democrats on the defensive using both stand-alone legislation as well as spending bills that fund the State Department and Homeland Security.

After we stop exacerbating the elective problem of mass migration from the Middle East, we need to look at the problems that already exist thanks to years of complacence. Mateen allegedly attended the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, which was frequented by American-born suicide bomber Monar abu Salha. He was also a follower of Marcus Dwayne Robertson, a radical Imam who was just let out of prison. If we are at war, then it’s time we start acting like it. How can we have organizations and Mosques openly run by the Muslim Brotherhood preaching insurrection against the U.S. while we are at war?  By declaring war on Islamic Jihad and designating groups like the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, just like the British government recently did, we will have the constitutional authority to shut down mosques run by those affiliated with them.

In addition, we need to clamp down on foreign money that flows to these mosques if those funds come from terror-supporting governments in the Middle East.  Just a few months ago, the Islamic government in Turkey was allowed to build a mosque outside of D.C. which will serve as the largest Islamic center in North America.  Turkish President Recep Erdogan reportedly referred to this mosque as the center for all Muslims in America.  I delved into this in more detail following the San Bernardino attacks in my column titled, 7 Constitutional Steps to Protect the Homeland Against Islamic Jihad.

There’s one other important narrative worth repeating this week. The very leftists that have made homosexuality a national religion – to the point that religious Christian and Jews who peacefully dissent are fined or imprisoned for not servicing it – are championing mass migration from the Middle East with people who do not peacefully dissent. Ironically, the biggest threat to the broader homosexual agenda is the growth of adherence to Sharia law in this country, yet some of the same leftists who are attacking religious groups have promoted the very policies that have created a surge in immigration from countries that don’t share the modern Judea-Christian virtue of tolerance.

At a clip of over 150,000 Muslim immigrants per year, we will soon learn which protected class takes precedence. Either way, the security of Americans will be placed far behind the far-Left agenda with gun control as the ultimate distraction.