By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
The Baltimore Banner is reporting that Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) is planning to push gun control measures if he is appointed to chair the House Judiciary Committee.
The Banner says Raskin acknowledged he would “try to close gun-sale loopholes,” and also look at legislation requiring background checks on private gun sales, same as they are now required for retail sales.
While he’s doing that, he hinted at pursuing the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
Many in the Second Amendment community contend that background checks amount to a form of gun registration. Raskin is well known for introducing permit-to-purchase legislation in 2025, which activists also believe is backdoor gun registration. It was the second time they tried to get the legislation passed.
The purchase permit would apply to handguns only, at least in the 2025 version.
Historically, Raskin has been a staunch anti-gunner, supporting universal background checks, bans on so-called “assault weapons,” and he has been endorsed by the gun prohibition lobby.
Raskin has a history of supporting gun restrictions, and hie views on the interpretation of the Second Amendment have been widely reported. The Hill reported Raskin’s remarks during a debate on pistol braces more than three years ago.
“They say we want to repeal the Second Amendment. Mr. Speaker, we don’t want them to repeal the Second Amendment. We want them to read the Second Amendment,” Raskin said on the House floor in mid-June 2023. “Because the Second Amendment would ask us why we are allowing people to go into elementary schools, Walmarts, supermarkets, churches and synagogues all over America with AR-15s enabled, sometimes with the stabilizing brace — as in Dayton, Ohio; Boulder, Colorado; Colorado Springs; Nashville, Tennessee — and assassinate our people.
“If a foreign government were doing it,” he added, “we would declare war on them. But since we’re just allowing the gun industry to spread these weapons of mass destruction around the country, they want to allow it. And they say that the Second Amendment must be respected in this strange and distorted way, because they believe the Second Amendment gives the people the right to overthrow the government.”
