Message for Maine: Don’t Fall for Graham Platner’s Latest ‘But I’m Good on Guns’ Messaging

The push is on to normalize Graham Platner, who’s currently leading in the Democrat primary to challenge incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins. Platner made news earlier in the campaign for covering up a Nazi tattoo that the self-described antifa supersoldier and communist found suddently politically inconvenient.

Now there’s an effort to not scare Maine’s purple electorate any further by claiming that he’d oppose another “assault weapons” ban if he finds himself in Washington.

The problem is that every prior Democrat who claimed this ultimately voted for or supported an AWB once they were actually in office…at least all of them in the last decade or so.

Further, let’s say that Platner really is serious, sticks to his word, and won’t vote in favor of hardware bans. He will still — absolutely — vote in favor of liberal judicial nominees, including for any SCOTUS vacancy that may come up…judges who would be reliable votes for overturning both Bruen and Heller.

The pattern is always the same. When they’re running in a red or purple state, they insist that they’ll oppose “assault weapons” bans. Sometimes they even run ads of them shooting AR-15s or similar guns. But once they’re in office and a mass shooting happens, they do some deep “soul searching,” then flip their position to whatever the party demands. Hell, Jason Kander flipped and he didn’t even win that Senate race.

The lesson for Mainers: don’t fall for it.

 

Kostas Moros is Director of Legal Research and Education for the Second Amendment Foundation.