By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Anti-Second Amendment lawmakers in Rhode Island are putting the lie to the argument Democrats have been making for decades, that “nobody is coming after your guns.”
In the Ocean State, this is exactly what they’re planning to do with the push to pass Senate Bill 2710, which would follow up on last year’s ban on new sales of so-called “assault weapons.” Under legislation passed in 2025, owners of such firearms were “grandfathered” in, allowing them to keep their guns.
But SB 2719 is an outright ban on possession—with no “grandfather” allowance. Under this legislation, current owners would have to sell their guns or move them out of state.
Writing at Fox News, John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, observed, “We’ve seen this playbook before. Just last year, Rhode Island banned the manufacture, sale and purchase of these firearms but allowed owners who previously acquired them to keep them. Now legislators want to finish the job — give gun control advocates an inch, and they take a mile, targeting commerce in firearms today and the firearms already in your safe tomorrow.”
Veteran Rhode Island gun rights activist Jeff Gross, in an email to TGM, said he has been in personal contact with U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon about the situation, asking them to look into the situation.
A hearing on several gun control bills in Providence early last month drew hundreds of gun owners, but from all indications, anti-gunners in the state house are not deterred.
And Commerford is raising the alarm.
“What makes this proposal especially alarming is not just what it bans, but how it leaves enforcement hanging in the air,” he explains. “The bill is conspicuously silent on how the state intends to deal with currently owned firearms that would suddenly become illegal overnight.”
Just how will the state enforce a total gun ban? Will state police or local officers go door-to-door to confiscate suddenly-illegal firearms? In an environment where the far left has been complaining about “fascism,” the notion of police confiscating privately-owned guns falls well within the realm of totalitarian government. Property that was legal last year would be suddenly illegal this year, by the mere stroke of a governor’s pen.
Commerford wraps up his Op-Ed noting, “Rhode Island may be small, but the implications of this legislation are anything but. This is a test case for how far lawmakers can go in dismantling a fundamental right — and how much Americans are willing to tolerate before pushing back. The 2026 midterms are coming. Voters in every state must remember which lawmakers treat the Second Amendment as optional — and hold them accountable at the ballot box this November.”
