The short of it was that he was afflicted with alzheimer’s, and the people who were handling him did not share his beliefs on gun rights. I’d embed the video, but it will auto play, but keep that in mind if you click through.
12 thoughts on “Michael Reagan on Father’s Endorsement of 1994 Ban”
Comments are closed.
Ronald Reagan owned an AR-15.
http://www.volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Reagan-AR-15-ASSC-August-19921.pdf
And GWB owns a possibly illegally imported G18.
Rule #3!
Part of the problem with statements like this is his family has a significant incentive to sanitize his record for posterity. He may very well be telling the truth, but it’s not a given he is. He could also be unintentionally ascribing to his father beliefs RR didn’t really have but Michael does. I don’t doubt he owned an AR, but there are a lot of pols who see the public’s general access to something as problematic while access by the aristocratic class as not so problematic.
It’s certainly possible. That’s also certainly what the antis are going to say.
But unlike them, I don’t care what the man thought. He is irrelevant to today’s issues… :-D
I tend to agree, but it’s one of those arguments the other side has liked to use.
This is true, but the fact is, that Reagan’s opinion in 1994 was certainly tainted as well. If the Antis are so determined to show that Reagan would have supported such a ban, they should be digging up quotes from the Eighties, when he was of sound mind, and, in particular, in a position of influencing policy.
As Mike123 in a later comment pointed out, Reagan wasn’t necessarily a friend of the Second Amendment, but then, I have the impression that not many people were at the time, and that actual support for the Second Amendment–both in political circles and in the public itself–has grown significantly since then.
Take my observations with a grain of salt, though. I didn’t even become politically “aware” until 1992-93, when I was in high school; even then, I didn’t tune in to gun rights until the early 2000’s; so I’m only giving my *impressions* on what it was like in the Eighties, based on what I have read about the gun rights movement.
How does Michael wash away the fact that the gipper banned loaded open carry as Governor of California? Time to face facts, Reagan was a gun-banner, no different than Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, and Obama
” but it will auto play, but keep that in mind if you click through.”
Evidently not if you use Firefox. I have to click the play button to watch the vid.
He does make a very good point though, why was it no-one made a big deal of it when black kids were getting shot daily in Chicago, but raise an uproar when mostly (if not only) white kids are shot at Sandy Hook???
Because it happened in one event. That makes it bigger news, and bigger news means more people know about it and there is more emotion. Emotion is what drives their movement. It shouldn’t matter from a policy standpoint, but it does. These people wanted gun control just as bad before Sandy Hook, but they see more opportunity now.