ILA | Georgia Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams Reiterates Support for Semi-automatic Ban

During a recent segment on ABC’s The View, Stacey Abrams reiterated her support for a ban on commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms.

During an interview with the candidate, host Meghan McCain, daughter of longtime U.S. Senator John McCain, asked Abrams,

You have been endorsed by Everytown, which is an anti-gun organization. Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun group as well. You say you are proud to have an ‘F’ rating from the NRA. Michael Bloomberg and others like him, in the wake of what happened in Pittsburgh, support taking away the AR-15, which is the most popular rifle in America, away from people.

Do you, like Everytown, support banning the AR-15?

After contending that she is not “anti-gun,” Abrams responded with a decidedly anti-gun statement.

Abrams expressed her support for criminalizing the private transfer of firearms and for a mandatory three-day waiting period. Abrams went on to mischaracterize commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms, stating, “I do not believe that weapons of mass destruction, like the AR-15, belong in civilian hands.”

McCain continued to press Abrams, asking, “I assume that by banning it you would be rounding them up. It’s the most popular gun in America… Would we be rounding them up from civilians in Georgia that own it?”

Abrams refused to answer the confiscation question directly, instead embarking on a non sequitur about her purported support for the Second Amendment.

McCain’s questions were an important means of eliciting Abrams’s radical anti-gun positions for the benefit of The View’s audience, but ultimately unnecessary to determine Abrams’s policy positions.

In 2016, as a member of the Georgia House of Representative, Abrams sponsored legislation to ban and confiscate commonly-owned semi-automatic firearms.

The Abrams-supported House Bill 731 would have defined several common models of firearms by name and semi-automatic rifles (including a standard configuration AR-15), handguns, and shotguns with certain features as “assault weapons.” The legislation stated that “No person shall possess, distribute, transport, transfer, or sell any assault weapon.” The bill also defined “large capacity magazine” as one that is capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition and prohibited possession of such magazines.

In order to enforce the gun and magazine ban, the legislation provided,

any person who possesses any assault weapon or large capacity magazine on July 1, 2016, shall have until October 31, 2016, to accomplish any of the following actions without any prosecution under the law:

(1)Modify such assault weapon or large capacity magazine to render it permanently inoperable or such that it is no longer an assault weapon or large capacity magazine; or

(2) Surrender such assault weapon or large capacity magazine to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation for destruction pursuant to this part.

The bill also included the following language,

Notwithstanding any other provision of the law, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation shall seize and take possession of any assault weapon, large capacity magazine… as provided for under Code Section 35-3-8. Any such assault weapon, large capacity magazine… taken by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation shall be destroyed, and a record of such destruction shall be maintained by such bureau.

Following McCain’s dogged questioning of Abrams, several anti-gun news outlets tried to spin the encounter as some sort of victory for the candidate. However, Abrams’s repeated desperate and fraudulent assertions about her support for the Second Amendment give away the game. It’s clear from Abrams’s own efforts to distract from her well-documented anti-gun record that anything that brings attention to her fanatical positions is a detriment to her candidacy.