As GunReports.com readers probably know, Senator Edward Moore “Teddy” Kennedy died last week, and the government-licensed media’s lionization of him filled airwaves all weekend.
We here at GunReports.com send our heartfelt condolences to his wife and family.
However, Teddy Kennedy was no friend to gun owners, and we will not overlook the damage he did to our civil liberties. Of the many counter-testimonies to Ted Kennedy’s “greatness” that are available, here are a few views of the deceased senator that sum up what some 2nd Amendment commentators thought of him:
Michael Todd on The Classic Liberal blog:
Not having the opportunity to say farewell to Senator Ted Kennedy yesterday, I thought a tribute was in order today.
Ted was an über-wealthy, alcoholic, playboy who lived a life of hedonistic debauchery as he coasted through life thanks to his father’s fortunes.
He eventually went on to buy himself a seat in the Senate, and went to work doing everything he could to destroy the principles and values, that made America the beacon of hope for the entire world.
Not once, did Ted Kennedy ever hesitate, when the opportunity arose to destroy individual liberty! Being the true-blue socialist he was, Kennedy believed that “we the people” were meant to be ruled (in sharp contrast to our Founding Fathers, who feared a ruling elite).
While Kennedy made this abundantly clear on a countless number of occasions, it was during the nomination hearings for Attorney General John Ashcroft, that Kennedy truly defined his elitist views.
During the first day of his hearings, Ashcroft was asked about the purpose of the 2nd Amendment, so he went about giving the Senate an important history lesson. As Ashcroft explained, the purpose of our constitutional protection of “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” is as a measure of protection against the tyranny of government.
This, of course, threw the statist Ted Kennedy into an absolute hissy-fit! Demonstrating his purposeful ignorance of the founding of our nation, he demanded that Ashcroft “apologize” (for speaking the truth?), crying “Our government? Tyrannical?”
Yes, but more specifically Ted… The 2nd Amendment is a measure of protection against you!
In Federalist 46, James Madison (the principle author of the Constitution) said gun ownership was another element of protection if the “checks and balances” of our republican system of government went astray. In other words, individuals should own guns because the government owns guns.
Click here to read “A tribute to Ted Kennedy” by Michael Todd in full.
Dudley Brown, Executive Director National Association for Gun Rights:
We will have the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill. And now we will get the Ted Kennedy Memorail gun grab.
Things are going to get even harder for gun owners.
After four decades in the U.S. Senate, Ted Kennedy’s life ended, as all lives do, in death. In his time in the Senate, he sponsored or pushed to make law virtually every piece of anti-gun legislation possible. Anti-gunners have already started to seize upon his death and demand that various pieces of anti-gun, anti-freedom legislation be passed to “honor Ted Kennedy.” I expect a major anti-gun legislative push as soon as Congress reconvenes in September.
Gun owners must not fall victim to a nostalgia surrounding a celebrity’s death that glosses over the harm done to the values we hold dear, and that our opponents ghoulishly seize upon to promote their agenda. We must guard against the normal tendency to overdose on compassion when our enemies die; to search for the silver lining around a cloud of acid rain.
He was no friend to gun owners, the Constitution or American Liberty. I anticipate that in the coming months, Sarah Brady’s gun control wish list will be repackaged and christened with Kennedy’s name — much to the welcome of clamorous applause and stirring speeches in the halls of Congress.
From ammunition micro-stamping to Dangerous ID, the different guises of gun control will invoke the liberal blessing of Ted Kennedy’s name — and weak-kneed RINOs afraid of taking a stand against the tyranny of a dead man’s name will find themselves going along for the ride. You and I must not allow the dead to continue to harm the living.
Chris W. Cox, NRA-ILA Executive Director:
Let’s take a quick look at the shameful anti-gun record of Obama’s good friend and benefactor Ted Kennedy. Obama was still in elementary school when Kennedy proposed his ‘Personal Safety Firearms Act of 1973.’
Taking to the Senate floor, Kennedy claimed: ‘Gun control laws in the United States are woefully inadequate. In our vast society guns should have no reasonable role.’ (Emphasis added.) This was Kennedy’s voice 30, 40 years ago.
That same voice contemptuously dismissed the right that the Founding Fathers recognized and sought to protect for future generations of Americans the right to own and possess arms for self-defense, for hunting, for simple personal enjoyment.
‘For the American family in 1973, fear, apprehension, mistrust, anguish and pain are the dreaded products of our firearms history,’ Kennedy claimed.
Summarizing his bill for his colleagues, Kennedy said it would require:
‘First, the registration of every civilian-owned gun in this country. Second, it will require all gun owners to pass stringent qualifying procedures to legally possess a gun and, third, it bans the domestic output of all hand-held firearms that are not designed for sporting purposes.’
Kennedy’s fellow senators understood differently, however, and soundly rejected his legislation on a 78-11 vote.
Undaunted, Kennedy continued to charge full steam ahead. In 1979, his constant efforts to abolish our Right to Keep and Bear Arms brought him to the attention of the Senate Ethics Committee. The committee unanimously rebuked Kennedy for improperly using Senate stationery to write fund-raising letters for gun-ban groups that included the National Coalition to Ban Handguns.
It’s safe to say that there is not a single outrageous anti-gun position Ted Kennedy has failed to support in his long career. He has voted to ban semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns. He has attempted to make it a federal crime to purchase more than two handguns in a year. He has proposed 21-day waiting periods on all gun purchases. He has made several attempts to ban centerfire hunting ammunition.
When his gun and ammunition bans failed, Sen. Kennedy fought tooth and nail to protect the gun control lobby’s schemes to bankrupt the American firearm industry. And don’t think that the gun confiscations from law-abiding citizens in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina troubled Kennedy in the least. He was one of only 16 senators to vote against the NRA-backed ‘Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act’ that became federal law on Oct. 9, 2006.
W. James Antle, III, the American Spectator, “The Face of Liberalism”:
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, dead of brain cancer at age 77, personified liberalism at its most decent and its most decadent. In his personal life, “degenerate” might often have been a better word. He took the Kennedy name from the glory of Camelot to the disgrace of Chappaquiddick, vacillating between the two from his famous Democratic National Convention address in 1980 to the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991.
The man who would become a beloved father figure to the sons and daughters of his slain brothers, left another family’s daughter to die in an incident that would have ended virtually any other politician’s career — and should have ended his. Yet Kennedy paid less of a price for behavior that led to the death of a human being than did professional football player Michael Vick for cruelty to animals.”
Click here to read W. James Antle’s editorial at the American Spectator.
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