Aloha with a Bullet
Is Tulsi Gabbard flipping on gun control?
This may seem like a strange issue to write about but I have a lot of personal time and effort invested into this area with this particular person. Many of you know I was a supporter of Tulsi Gabbard’s in 2019 and early 2020. And I’ve been a libertarian since 2014, so my support was somewhat pragmatic, given her positions on several issues, especially guns. See the tweet below from 2018.
“Tulsi has a consistent record of advocating for sensible gun control. She has long called for reinstating a federal ban on military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines, requiring comprehensive pre-purchase background checks, closing the gun-show loophole, and making sure that terrorists are not allowed to buy guns. Tulsi has an F-rating from the NRA, a 0% rating by the Hawaii Rifle Association, and a 100% rating by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. She is focused on building bipartisan solutions that can actually be passed into law, rather than using the issue as a partisan political football.”
Tulsi’s record on gun control is not good, but she wasn’t a run-of-the-mill gun grabber either. As the article points to above, she was kind of hard to pin down on the subject, occasionally bucking the party line and voting with the Republicans. But she was a Democrat from Hawaii, so at the end of the day she supported banning “assault weapons,” high capacity magazine, private sales, and the “ gun show loophole.” This cost her thousands of supporters, especially in New Hampshire, and I along with several of her supporters begged her to reconsider her ridiculous views on the subject, but were mostly met with indifference by her and her staff
Now, it’s no secret that Tulsi has tried to rebrand herself since her run for President in 2020. She has gone from being the Bernie supporter who endorsed Joe Biden because of his good heart to the Democrat darling of the right. And it’s not just from regular appearances on Tucker Carlson, but the substance of her commentary has taken an undoubtable turn. She’s gone from supporting Medicare for All, free college and reparations to blasting Democrats for supporting a “cradle to grave” welfare system. And though she has mostly tiptoed around the gun issue, a couple days ago she put out a video of herself shooting high capacity magazines and one of those awful assault weapons that she wanted to ban just a couple years ago.
She was challenged on this obvious change of course by many on multiple social media platforms.
She’s not very active on Twitter any more, but she DID answer this question on Instagram.
I am very intrigued with what she has to say. This will undoubtedly give her much stronger conservative support, and was probably the biggest hangup the right had with her, as I told her a couple years ago.
So I want to know. What do you guys think? Do you trust her? Do you think she’s had a genuine change of heart or do you think she’s just conveniently changing her mind on several issues to appease her new crowd of supporters? Let me know in the comments.
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I don’t trust ANY politician, but I want to trust Tulsi. If this is a genuine change of heart on the 2A issue, I would consider supporting her. I would need to see a lot more from her. I agree with a comment below…she should just come out with her views, rather than teasing a change in position. It seems disingenuous.
Tulsi is a tough one to figure out. She’s good on war (for the most part), Snowden, Assange, etc. But I don’t really trust her. As you note in the article - she flip-flopped on issues she had a firm opinion on for years - med4all, free college, etc (albeit bad ones). And I certainly don’t trust her change in position on guns. But who knows? She might be getting better on guns. Like I said, tough to figure out lol.