Gun rights advocate John Lott Jr. said in an interview that aired Monday on Hill.TV’s “Rising” that a Democratic president would possibly declare a national emergency on gun violence in order to confiscate firearms.
“I’d see that [as] quite possible,” Lott Jr., the author of “The War on Guns,” told host Buck Sexton last week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“You’ve seen California, New York, Chicago and other places in the United States that have already used registration lists that they’ve had to identify people that owned guns to force them to have to turn them in, and get rid of them,” he continued.
“It wouldn’t be a stretch at all to see something like that happening nationally,” he said.
Congress is set to block President Trump’s national emergency at the U.S. southern border with Mexico, after Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) announced he would vote against the declaration, which would provide funding for Trump’s long-promised border wall.
Many Republicans have argued that Trump’s declaration could set a precedent for future Democratic presidents to declare national emergencies on issues such as gun violence.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) warned Republicans last month that the next president could declare a national emergency on guns.
“A Democratic president can declare emergencies, as well,” Pelosi said. “So the precedent that the president is setting here is something that should be met with great unease and dismay by the Republicans.”
A number of Democrats in the 2020 primary field have pledged to take action on gun control if elected.
— Julia Manchester
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.