Ohio businessman Vivek Ramaswamy said he would shut down a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) that is “beyond repair” and expand Second Amendment rights if he is elected president.

The political outsider vying for the Republican Party’s nomination laid out his gun rights agenda in a speech Friday to the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Indianapolis.

He joined a slate of conservative presidential hopefuls and lawmakers, including Republican presidential frontrunner former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, and Ohio Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH-13), among other power players.

Ramaswamy has said he would shut down the FBI and rebuild a new federal law enforcement apparatus from scratch that can perform background checks “without creating a gun registry or shadow database.”

“[A]nd I will shut down the ATF, whose culture has become so toxic it cannot merely be ‘rerformed,’” the anti-woke crusader said in his speech before NRA members at Friday’s NRA-Institute for Legislative Action Leadership Forum.

Ramaswamy, a second-generation Indian-American who, at 37, is the youngest candidate in the field of Republican presidential contenders, admitted he grew up in an “anti-gun” household. He didn’t grow up hunting. But he’s a gun owner today.

“The reason I became a gun owner is that the Second Amendment was made for moments like today,” he said to applause.

Ramaswamy, who jumped in the race in February, repeated his overriding campaign theme, the Land of the Free is being lost in an identity struggle driven by the radical Left.

“They will tell you that we elect the people that actually run the government and yet the party in power will use police power to arrest its chief political rivals who are former presidents of the United States,” he said in a jab at what many Americans see as  Democrat Manhattan District Attorney Albin Bragg’s politically driven prosecution of Trump. “That is not the America I grew up in. That is not the America I learned to pledge allegiance to.”

He was preaching to the choir. The NRA and gun rights proponents everywhere have been under constant political assault from a gun control lobby bent on rewriting the Second Amendment — without the benefit of an amendment.

In Nashville, liberal lawmakers and their well-funded allies commandeered the State House Floor, shutting down the body to protest for sweeping control in the wake of a mass shooting at a Christian private school. The shooter, a 28-year-old transgender woman who identified as a man, swiftly became a footnote to the left’s campaign for gun restrictions. And two Tennessee lawmakers who were expelled from their House seats for leading the disorderly and, many say, riotous protest have been hailed as heroes by gun control activists and their allies in the media and at the White House.

Ramaswamy read from the constitutions of Iran and communist China, each ostensibly granting individual rights. He noted both countries don’t have a Second Amendment and heavily restrict gun ownership.

“That is what makes America’s Bill of Rights a reality rather than just an American dream,” Ramaswamy said to rising applause. “It is the fact that we have a Second Amendment that gives teeth to every one of those other amendments in [the U.S.] Constitution.”

To that end, Ramaswamy said he supports a “national constitutional carry law that allows Americans to carry their firearms on their person, no matter what state you live in.”

The young candidate has made the first nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire a second home in the opening months of his frenetic campaign. He was on a campaign bus tour in the Granite State Friday morning before flying into Indianapolis for his speech at the NRA annual meeting. He was back in New Hampshire for a speech Friday night. Ramaswamy, like his fellow conservative rivals, knows the importance of the gun rights voter to his political prospects.

He said he wanted to deliver his message in person, not like some “career politician” checking the boxes with a recorded message.

That was perhaps a jab at declared and presumptive candidates such as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, each offering pre-recorded messages. Haley, recording her remarks from the campaign trail in Iowa, said she had to miss the NRA event because her daughter is getting married this weekend.

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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Vivek Ramaswamy” by NRA.

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