Talarico’s campaign checks all of the boxes on gun control wish lists, including “passing commonsense gun safety laws,” establishing universal background checks for gun sales, “rais[ing] the age to purchase semi-automatic rifles with certain military-style features like high-capacity magazines,” and “opposing legislation allowing for the permitless carry of firearms in Texas.”
At a 2020 virtual town hall event, Talarico expounded on his views of the Second Amendment. He was “proud to take steps as a lawmaker…introducing gun safety legislation myself and always supporting any gun safety bill that came onto the floor of the House” (starting at 24:16). Very few politicians, he said, “have actually read the Second Amendment because, if they did, they would know that the words ‘well regulated’ are right there in the text of the amendment itself, and so like any right we have in our Constitution it’s not unlimited and it’s not absolute… and we can put common sense restrictions and limitations on that right” (starting at 24:33). The reason, he claimed, that these “common sense” restrictions and limitations were not enacted despite broad bipartisan support was because “policymakers at the federal and state levels are beholden to the gun lobby and in particular the NRA” (starting at 25:14).
Talarico may have been a middle-school English teacher, but his reading comprehension is way off. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Heller and McDonald and Bruen, has saved him the trouble of puzzling the Second Amendment out for himself. Far from allowing the restriction of Second Amendment rights, the adjective “well regulated” applies to “militia,” the word immediately following, and means (as the U.S. Supreme Court explained in Heller), “nothing more than the imposition of proper discipline and training” in the context of securing an individual right to bear arms for defensive purposes, including citizens called to the common defense.
And speaking of common sense, the reason why these “common sense” restrictions and limitations have not been enacted is that voters have communicated, in the most obvious way possible, that they don’t care for pointless bureaucracy and unconstitutional, ineffective gun laws that burden only the law-abiding.
We’ve said it before: Talarico is nothing more than Beto 2.0.
— NRA-ILA in “Hell, No!” to Beto 2.0