22-Year Police Vet Tells Congress She 'Will Not Comply' with 'Assault Weapon' Ban
A former Oklahoma police officer made an impassioned defense of Second Amendment rights Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, and breathed defiance in the face of Democrats who have supported taking away guns.
The hearing was part of effort in Congress to pass gun control laws — an effort that gained steam after this summer’s shootings in El Paso and Dayton.
This month, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas, said that if elected, he would push for a mandatory so-called “buyback” of AR-15s.
On Wednesday, Dianna Muller, who was with the Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma for 22 years and founded The DC Project, a gun rights group, told Congress that a ban on so-called “assault weapons” is bad policy.
“I find it ironic in today’s effort of criminal justice reform that you are taking steps to be lenient on people who have actually committed crimes against laws you created, while at the same time you are proposing more laws, like the Assault Weapons Ban of 2019, that turn ordinary, law-abiding citizens into criminals,” Muller said in a prepared statement that she delivered.
“I submit that we work on holding people accountable for the laws that are already on the books before we pass any further legislation, that would only be a burden on the law-abiding. If these laws were the answer, Chicago, Baltimore, LA and even this city, would be the safest cities in America.”
Muller deviated from her prepared remarks to make the issue plain for the members of Congress she spoke to.
“Please don’t legislate the 150 million people just like me into being criminals. It has happened. You’ve already done it,” Muller said, citing the Trump administration’s move to make bump stocks illegal, according to Fox News.
“I was a bump stock owner, and I had to make a decision: Do I become a felon, or do I comply?” she said.
She did once, she said. Not again.
Muller said if a so-called “assault” weapons ban is passed, “I will not comply.”
Muller said she was at the hearing to give voice to women who were victims of gun violence and who could not protect themselves because of anti-gun legislation
“Gun rights are women’s rights. That’s why I’m honored to be here, to be a voice for the millions of women who share my beliefs, but are not represented in mainstream media or are squelched on social media,” she said.
Watch her testimony below:
Muller brought up the Parkland tragedy in Florida, in which 17 people were killed last February.
“If we learn anything from the Parkland tragedy, it is the repeated failure of government, laws and policy. Students ‘saw something and said something’ to school administration; law enforcement responded to the shooter’s residence more than 30 times, with no action taken,” she said. “The ultimate failure in Parkland was from the responding officers that fateful day. They remained outside while students were continuing to be murdered inside. Parkland reminds us that law enforcement has no constitutional duty to protect.”
“If you ask what would have stopped the Parkland shooter, it’s the same answer as in every shooting: being confronted with equal force,” she said.
Muller said that Congress should abide by common sense and not “a very well-organized, well-funded effort, assisted by the mainstream media, masterfully crafting campaigns to demonize guns and gun owners, and disarm our citizenry from politicians, mainstream media and our schools using their megaphones to paint gun owners as ‘deplorables’ or ‘domestic terrorists’ to now discriminating against gun owners.”
“Common sense tells us that banning ‘assault rifles’ will not stop the problem of mass murders. Common sense tells me that if you succeed in banning this gun, you will go after the next gun when the next tragedy happens,” she said. “My own experience with prior Assault Weapons Ban was it was ineffective. I saw zero impact on the streets and the FBI statistics confirmed it.”
Muller said accounts that emerge every day of citizens who use guns to protect themselves should prove that banning guns puts lives at risk.
“Any ban on firearms will inhibit a citizen’s ability to protect themselves and their families and their homes. Can you understand my hesitancy to support any laws that are designed to restrict or infringe on my God-given rights? The Constitution guarantees the government will not infringe on the right to keep and bear arms,” she said.
She then reminded the members of Congress at the hearing that allowing some people to be protected by guns and not others is a form of hypocrisy.
“Each of you is actually pro-gun. Everyday in this very building, you are surrounded and protected by men and women with firearms; some of you just are against me and others having firearms. What about ordinary Americans who don’t have the luxury of having someone else carry guns for us to protect us?” she said.
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