Last June, when President Joe Biden’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a “public health crisis,” it raised eyebrows for a number of reasons. For one thing, he used fake numbers from the discredited Gun Violence Archive (GVA) to bolster his argument. For another, most of us are aware that the problem isn’t “gun violence,” it’s actually “criminal violence”—violent acts committed by criminals with guns.
Another solid reason to be worried about the proclamation is the propensity of liberal politicians to limit gun owners’ rights during states of emergency. Now, one Republican congressman is addressing that issue.
U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, recently introduced the Protecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act, which is designed to block the federal government from exploiting national emergencies as a backdoor method for enforcing unconstitutional gun control measures.
Rep. Cloud’s bill explicitly prohibits the president from declaring a national emergency to impose gun control and blocks officials from restricting the manufacturing, sale or transfer of firearms and ammunition during crises. This ensures that public health authority cannot be misused to undermine the Second Amendment.
“We saw during COVID how government agencies exploited emergency powers to strip Americans of their freedoms—including attempts to use public health declarations as a tool for sweeping mandates and restrictions,” Rep. Cloud said in a news release announcing the measure. “We’ve also seen how the federal bureaucracy has made it clear they will seize any opportunity to expand their control at the expense of our liberties. We must steward this window of opportunity to re-secure these rights for the American people and ensure no administration can use emergency declarations as a backdoor for unconstitutional gun control.”
Rep. Cloud said that his measure is a “safeguard” to President Donald Trump’s recent executive order blocking the government from infringing on Americans’ fundamental right to bear arms.
“The Protecting the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Act will cement this safeguard by ensuring that no administration can use declared emergencies—specifically the Secretary of Health and Human Services—as an excuse to impose unconstitutional gun restrictions,” Rep. Cloud said. ‘It is important that Congress takes this up and codifies it immediately.”
As expected, a number of pro-gun organizations, including the Gun Owners of America (GOA), were quick to embrace Rep. Cloud’s legislation. Aiden Johnston, GOA’s director of federal affairs, called on Congress to address and pass the legislation.
“Public officials must be prohibited from weaponizing their ’emergency powers’ to infringe on Constitutional rights,” Johnston said. “GOA is still fighting New Mexico’s tyrannical governor in court to prevent her abuse of a ‘public health emergency’ to unilaterally suspend the right to bear arms in Albuquerque. And gun owners are still waiting for the retraction of the so-called ‘public health emergency’ declared to promote gun control by President Biden’s Surgeon General.
“And, of course, gun owners will never forget the countless ways their rights were infringed by COVID-related lockdowns. Congress must pass Rep. Michael Cloud’s bill to protect the Second Amendment from these grievous abuses of power.”
