The rise of Vice President Kamala Harris seems to have delivered a sharp dose of optimism into the veins of the left-wing intelligentsia.
Now that the media no longer has to try unsuccessfully to convince the voting public that President Joe Biden is a viable candidate despite his age and mental decline, they are already working hard to position Harris for victory.
It is this optimism that likely inspired the author of a New Republic op-ed to suggest that Harris should attack former President Donald Trump on immigration despite the fact that the Biden administration’s record on the border crisis has been about as abysmal as it can get.
The author’s recommendation: Link gun control to illegal immigration to convince the voting public that Harris is better on the border.
The article starts with the dubious claim that Harris can “turn her opponent’s main weapon into his Achilles’ heel.” Then she begins making the case for bringing up gun violence.
This strategy is long overdue from the Democratic Party, which has tended to dither in the face of Trump’s border fearmongering. But Harris can do more to seize control of the immigration narrative. She can co-opt Trump’s signature issue by talking about border control—in terms of gun control.
The author goes on to bring up the assassination attempt on Trump and how he has been discussing the incident.
Since a 20-year-old white man and registered Republican tried to assassinate Trump with an AR-style rifle, Trump has been eager to talk about bullets. He referenced the bullets that nearly killed him 11 times in his speech at the Republican National Convention, almost as often as he used the word “invasion” to describe immigrants. He talked about bullets again a day later in Michigan, saying: “I took a bullet for democracy.” He repeatedly mentioned bullets at his July 31 rally in Pennsylvania.
So let’s talk about bullets. In the wake of his assassination attempt, Trump now falls into the same category as many of the immigrants he’s been scapegoating: survivors of underregulated guns.
Then, she describes “An iron river of U.S. firearms” that has “flowed south for decades” through smuggling operations. She notes that Mexico, “which has just one gun store and requires months of background checks,” still has a gun violence problem, with “about 70 percent of weapons found at crime scenes” being traced to the United States.
More than half a million U.S. guns are trafficked into Mexico annually, according to that country’s estimates. The Mexican government is even suing U.S. gun manufacturers for $10 billion, accusing them of knowingly flooding the country with weapons. Although undocumented immigrants come from an increasing array of nations, the majority still come from Latin America, with the largest number of immigrants coming from Mexico, followed by Venezuela.
Harris has a long and storied history of targeting gun traffickers, according to the article. “As California’s top prosecutor, Harris noted the importance of going after gun traffickers in a 2014 report, ‘Gangs Beyond Borders: California and the Fight Against Transnational Organized Crime,’” she wrote. She criticized Trump for blocking legislation that supposedly “would have also made ports of entry more secure with 100 new inspection machines to detect illicit cargo passing through them” and claimed the former president and the GOP “have done nothing but sabotage attempts to make progress on the continental gun problem.”
It was a valiant and creative effort. But Harris’ team would be foolish to take her suggestions.
For starters, the international gun trade isn’t exactly at the top of voters’ priority lists. Sure, gun violence in America might have people concerned. But only a small group of folks in the U.S. are worried about the trafficking of firearms to Mexico.
Even further, the reason people are concerned about immigration is due to the ongoing border crisis that has seen waves of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers swarming to the southern border and entering the country. The issue is that people are worried about immigration because of the fact that many of those crossing the border illegally have committed violent crimes after making it into the country.
America’s immigration system has been broken for ages. But it isn’t the trafficking of guns that is the issue for most Americans. If Harris wants better arguments against Trump, she should probably stay away from the immigration issue, given the Biden administration’s refusal to address the border crisis.