ted-cruz

Holy hypocrisy, Batman! Allen Clifton, writing for something called Forward Progressives, thinks he’s caught the Texas Senator and presidential candidate in a whopper of a double standard. Second Amendment absolutist Cruz opposes background checks for firearms purchases. And as part of his campaign, one lucky supporter will win be selected to enjoy and afternoon of shooting with Sentor Ted . . .

But OMG!…the contest’s fine print says the campaign reserves the right to run a background check on the winner.

No biggie, right? Or is it? If you’re opposed to the .gov issuing permission slips to exercise an enumerated right, is it a contradiction for a campaign to check on who they allow near the candidate with a firearm? Or is that just good sense?

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63 COMMENTS

    • +1 beat me to it.

      I’m sure there’s a short list that would gladly take the opportunity to kill mister Cruz.

      • I’m sure most of them read blogs with names like “Forward Progressives”, too…

      • FWW and RC. Exactly. Nutters gonna nut and a public figure needs to take precautions. Busting a pro gun pols chops for something like this appears childish at best.

        • Allen Clifton is from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and has a degree in Political Science. He is a co-founder of Forward Progressives, bio from his web site.
          Not childish, just a really mean piece of work. His writing comes off as very juvenile rants.

      • I’d be happy to shoot with him, and proud to have him as POTUS or VPOTUS (V-POTUS?). I’ll be entering, and he’s welcone to check out my part. My criminal record consists of two well-deserved speeding tickets in ’97 and ’99. A little more digging would reveal that I’ve given roughly a grand to Scott Walker and Rand Paul.

        I’m pretty sure I’ve donated to Cruz, but not nearly as much. I’m waiting for one of the R’s to distance himself / herself from the pack before I put down big bucks. I’ve got 2 mortgages, kids, and dogs to feed. Plus a wife.

        • Ted’s on a (very) short list I would vote for-him,Huck,Paul and Walker. Never the rotund joiseyite…

        • Where in the second amendment does It say I have a right to hunt with Ted Cruz ?

      • Your point in mocking progressives proves their point of those in favor of background checks. Well done.

    • Yeah, he probably read about the Chris Kyle range trip with a crazy thing.

  2. I’m thinking this has to do more with him not wanting to get setup. It’s not hard to imagine a felon or something posing for pictures shooting with Ted, knowingly or not, and the msm picking it up and running with it.

    • The whole thing is one of those incredibly dumb pr stunts that 20 something staffers with not enough to do sometimes think up. We all know where Ted stands vis-a-vis guns and so I have to wonder just why his campaign staff thinks there are People Of The Gun who are jumping and and down with excitement at the thought spending face-time with a politician. I mean, I’m sure Ted’s a nice guy and all that and I’ll happily support him, but still . . . Sadly, you can’t fix stupid. There’s no upside to this. None at all.

      • Yeah, what’s really the best case scenario here? They get a few photos of Ted awkwardly holding guns with a “regular person”? That helps his campaign how? Just a dumb idea all around.

        It reminds me of those awful staged “duck hunting” trips that politicians like to set up to show they’re outdoorsy sportsmen who aren’t afraid of guns. The ones where they dress up in brand-new, still-has-the-Cabela’s-tags-on-it orange and camo Elmer Fudd costumes and pose for a couple photos of them holding a fancy shotgun.

    • Exactly. They aren’t too worried about a nutter offing Cruz. What they are worried about is a corpse raping, dog fighting, horse thieving, moonshine running, paper hanging, tax cheating no good four flushing bigamist. Imagine the field day the liberal media would have if he was photographed shaking hands with such a guy. It’s always about how you can be made to look.

      • You must like a lot of horrible things, if you consider a decent education to be what’s wrong with the world.

        • Actually the grammar can go either way here nowadays. The clause can be rendered correctly as “the one who shoots with him”, and while older English would have made “the one” objectival, more recent English makes it the subject of a subsidiary clause.

          In terms of grammatical theory, the older method is correct: the question can be reduced to “Should Ted run a background check on him?” Thus the word to replace “him” in a clause should follow the case of “him”; thus “whom –> whomever”.

          Anyone who knows a case-dependent foreign language should recognize what’s going on here.

      • No.
        The object of the preposition on is a clause “[word] shoots with him.” The subject of that clause is nominative, therefore it is who or whoever, not whom or whomever.

        For it to be whomever, the clause would have to be something like “whomever he shoots with.”

  5. A government entity illegally interfering with legal commerce by unjustifiably withholding a legal product from a legal purchaser is an entirely different animal than a ostensibly private enterprise running a background check on someone it is inviting into its own space.

  6. For it before against it,

    Against it before for it

    Evolving positions…

    Politicians~ gotta love ’em,

    Or……

  7. Meh.

    I’d imagine anyone getting to spend time with the Senator or any other prominent politician would have a background check ran on them whether or not it was a firearm related event. Much (or little) ado about nothing.

    • Whatever security detail he has guarding him will certainly check you out whether they tell you or get your permission or not.

  8. Government mandated background check = bad
    Personal choice to run a background check = good

    Capisce, leftist douchebags?

  9. “.. reserves the right…”

    They didn’t say they *would* run the check, only that they were warning you they could if they wanted.

    You could spin it as a double-standard if you wanted, but you just be trying to spin something for the sake of spinning something.

    Trying to make it out to be some sort of bad thing just demonstrates the bias against that candidate. And from a group with a name like ” Forward Progressives” this would be my shocked face learning that they don’t like Senator Cruz.

  11. I don’t think it is hypocritical as the “Forward Progress” guy does but the fine print of the contest along with his views on background checks does make it look a little hypocritical to the casual observer.

    You would think his campaign would have picked up on that.

    • That being said, it would be hypocritical of Cruz to state he believe in Constitutional Carry but has a background check for the contest winner.

      • Actually, it wouldn’t be hypocritical at all. Having the government mandate a background check, what is tantamount to a criminal investigation without charge nor a warrant however brief, is a wholly different affair than an ostensibly private organization inviting an outsider into its own space to interact with its members.

        The two are totally unequivocal, and thus, there is no hypocrisy to articulate because none exists.

        • It is hypocritical if Cruz has publicly stated that he believes that background checks are worthless (if they are, why does he want to run one?). Hypocrisy here has nothing to do with public vs private, law vs personal desire, but solely on the rationale. If UBC is a bad law because it doesn’t do anything useful (as opposed to, say, because it infringes on RKBA even if it’s useful), then there should be no reason for a private background check. If such reasons do exist, they would apply as an utilitarian rationale to the law, as well.

        • That was my thinking, too, int19h. His rationale for opposing background checks is sort of the crux of the biscuit. If he opposes them on constitutional grounds, then it’s all hunky-dory. If he opposes them because they don’t work at their stated goal of reducing crime, then it’s pretty hypocritical to run one on the contest winner.

          I suspect, given his mostly-libertarian schtick on most topics, it’s the former, so it’s no big deal to me.

        • I see what y’all are getting at, but it doesn’t hold water. The reason UBC’s don’t work is that a criminal can just get a gun somewhere else. A criminal that is hoping to shoot with Ted Cruz cannot circumvent the background check by just hanging out with an illegal version of Ted somewhere else. There’s only one Ted.

        • True, Layne, but there are numerous ways that background checks fail. It’s not just that they push folks who fail the BC to buy an “illegal” gun. There are plenty of cases of killers passing the background check and buying guns legally, then going on to kill with them. Likewise, someone could pass Ted’s background check and still mean him harm. A background check is, at best, an extremely coarse filter that only catches the most obvious, raving nutjobs. Those who are able to conceal their insanity (the most dangerous kind of sociopath) will sail right through.

          As they say in the finance world, past performance is no guarantee of future returns…

  12. So…Ted has an FFL, and is going to sell the guy a gun? No? Oh, its a shooting trip with Ted. Yeah, the possibility of a background check is sooo hypocritical.

  14. You don’t have to take up the offer with Mr. Cruz. You win the chance, you get checked up on. You don’t want to be checked out, stay in your rat hole and be happy.

  15. Taken out of context and spun. Progressive’s are set to destroy the Constitution. I respect Cruz’s allegiance to the foundation of the USA.

  16. Far as I’m concerned even talking to one of these so called ‘progressives’ is just like trying to argue for the rights of Jews with a Nazi.

  17. Its not mandated by the governments, its voluntarily submitted to in order to participate. Only a progressive that views everything as an entitlement would balk this.

  18. I would rather shoot with Joe Biden. He seems like he has some interesting shotgun tactics that I would like to learn.

    • I understand that if you go shooting with Dick Cheney, they don’t do a BG check, but they do type and cross-match you for blood, just in case you might need a transfusion.

  19. You can’t let just anybody get near a presidential candidate. Why, first thing you know, crazies like Pelosi and Reid could get access !

  24. Dan, if he wins the nomination, the S.S. will be doing a background check like you can’t imagine. It isn’t surprising that there is security at this stage.

  25. You’d have to pay me to go shooting with him — he’s a scientific ignoramus. I wouldn’t be able to stay properly polite if he opened his mouth about anything scientific.

    • You’re shooting firearms with him, not creating temporary black holes by colliding subatomic particles in a particle accelerator.

      Yeesh.

  26. Did a progressive writer seriously just call out hypocrisy?

    Isn’t that kinda like Bin Laden scolding Christian anti-gay protestors for religious intolerance?

    “Progressives” have made a crude artform of hypocrisy.

  27. I wish there was a way you can confirm someone was not crazy and not violent, keep their purchasing history private, and not have arbitrary standards for what “not crazy and not violent” created by biased politicians.

    ::rides away on a rainbow unicorn::

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