In announcing his support for an assault weapon ban after the Parkland shootings, [Tim Walz] told The Star Tribune: “I’m not just asking to be the congressman from the First Congressional District. I’m looking at a broader state with broader issues, broader population densities, and I think as a legislator I’ve been proud to say if the facts dispute our ideology, change the ideology.”
As Mr. Walz sought to rebut charges that he had only recently altered his views out of political expediency, he pointed to procedural votes he had taken in Congress in 2015 and 2016. They were less significant than he implied. Virtually all of them were party-line roll calls to allow debate on gun controls, not votes on the underlying bills. These parliamentary maneuvers had no chance of succeeding in the Republican-controlled House, but they would allow Democrats to accuse the G.O.P. of blocking politically popular proposals.
That is why advocates on both sides of the gun issue gave them no credence at the time. Bryan Strawser, chairman of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, said procedural votes that went nowhere did not matter.
“I would see these votes and his mention of them when he ran for governor as an attempt to rewrite the script and position himself in the best possible light for his new political ambitions,” Mr. Strawser said, adding that Mr. Walz had “always voted to support gun rights” until it no longer suited him.
Rachael Joseph, a gun control activist who founded a group called Survivors Lead, said she was glad Mr. Walz shifted his stance when he did. But gun violence had been an obvious problem long before he ran for governor, she said, and “he just wasn’t there.”
— Mike McIntire in Tim Walz’s Bumpy Road to Gun Control
Me thinks he soiled his knickers!
Where do politicians like Walz stand on issues?
Well that depends on what’s popular at the time within their circle of supporters..
It seems that in their minds, they don’t lie they just have merely changed their minds.
There is no such thing as “gun control”. Try and see…