Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. says that he supports the Second Amendment
It seems a little challenging to figure out exactly what Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s views are on guns. On the one side, in a recent June 5th, 2023 interview with Jordan Peterson shown above, Kennedy talks about Republicans taking money from “dirty”/”disreputable” industries such as oil, tobacco, and the NRA, and that this means that Republicans have been able to get “unlimited money.” Of course, Michael Bloomberg massively outspends NRA in supporting candidates, so Kennedy is sorely misinformed (see here, here, and here). This attack is less clear because he qualifies his statement as saying that Democrats have viewed them as “disreputable,” indicating that they may not actually be “disreputable.”
On the other side, in the statement below, Kennedy makes a powerful statement about gun ownership in a town hall with Michael Smerconish, though the video above doesn’t seem as clear-cut as the quotes below. In response to banning AR-15s, Kennedy does throw in that if there is a consensus, you can tinker around at the margins.
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When asked about his stance on the Second Amendment, he said, “I believe in the Constitution and I’m not going to take everybody’s guns away.
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“I had two family members who were killed by gunfire, so I understand the anguish and the pain of losing a loved one to gun violence. We must figure out a way to deal with it but talking about taking people’s guns away at this point in history is not a solution,” he said..
Five years before his father was shot and killed, former President John F. Kennedy (JFK), his uncle, suffered the same fate.
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Over the past three years, Kennedy added, “We’ve seen extraordinary initiatives by our federal government against the Bill of Rights, freedom of speech, freedom of worship. And jury trials have been under attack, property rights have been under attack, and freedom from warrantless searches and seizures have all been under attack.
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“The only reason we have anything left in our Constitution is because we have that Second Amendment,” he noted.
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Kennedy also shares a stance about the border crisis that is more reflective of conservative legislators. . . .
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