Sen. Ted Cruz
goes full LaPierre:
"The 2nd Amendment to the Constitution isn't for just protecting hunting rights, and it's not only to safeguard your right to target practice. It is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny -- for the protection of liberty," Cruz wrote to supporters in a fundraising email on Thursday, under the subject line "2nd Amendment against tyranny."
This "insurrectionist" argument, as Second Amendment expert and UCLA law professor Adam Winkler calls it, is popular among passionate gun owners and members of the National Rifle Association. But major party candidates for president don't often venture there.
Indeed. Relatively few lawmakers are fans of the notion that our guns exist in case everyday American citizens decide they need to start murdering government officials. It is a theory most popular among lunatics and people on FBI watch lists, though the NRA embrace of this central doctrine of the far-right militia movement has given it new prominence. This speaks, however, more to the retooling of the now fully conspiracy-addled NRA
into the overt political arm of that militia movement than it does to any new mainstream embrace of the theory.
Which is why Ted Cruz so far finds himself rather alone on this particular party plank, with other potential presidential candidates wanting nothing to do with it.
[Sen. Lindsey Graham] demurred. "I'm not looking for an insurrection. I'm looking to defeat Hillary," he said. "We're not going to out-gun her."
Perhaps, but that's why Ted Cruz is going to get the NRA's endorsement in the race and you're not, Lindsey Graham. The NRA doesn't know if it could out-gun her, but it knows its members should be allowed to try.