Dems’ threat to have future prez declare ‘national emergency’ over gun violence is EMPTY

By Jon Dougherty

One reason why so many Republican lawmakers are opposed to President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency along the southwest border in order secure funds to build a border wall is that they fear a Democrat president down the road will use the authority to declare gun violence an “emergency.”

But a new analysis of political, legal, and constitutional aspects of such a declaration reveals that any such threat is empty.

For one thing, notes Graham Noble at LibertyNation.com,Â the right to keep and bear arms regardless of any ’emergency’ is guaranteed by the Second Amendment. Any attempt by a Democratic president to ban, confiscate, or otherwise “infringe” upon that right is simply unconstitutional.

Now, he admits, Democratic presidents of late are prone to constitutional violations; Barack Obama simply imposed the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program on the country as an immigration policy in direct violation of existing immigration laws and got away with it. But in that case, an action which was clearly an impeachable offense was allowed to stand thanks to a politicized, partisan Congress.

As Noble writes:

As the president himself pointed out during his CPACÂ address, he is not setting any precedent because a future Democratic president would invoke national emergency powers if they saw fit to do so, regardless of what Trump does in the present. How quickly people forget that the most stunning example â€“ in recent years â€“ of a president completely bypassing Congress to take action on a major issue of national concern was Barack Obamaâ€™s creation of the DACA program. In that instance, the president simply ignored Congress, commandeered its authority to legislate, and changed federal law. Obama did not even declare a national emergency to do so and Congress put up no fight.

“The idea, then, that Trumpâ€™s national emergency declaration will embolden future presidents to use the same tactic is nonsense. Congressional Democrats have shown that they are willing to simply cede unlimited authority to a president, should they choose to do so,” he added.

Noble notes further that Democrats have only floated the idea of a gun violence national emergency; they haven’t discussed publicly what one would look like, what form it would take, and — importantly — what ‘measures’ a Democratic president would take to ‘address’ it.



