After 25 Years in Guard, Does Tim Walz Even Know What Kind of Rifle He Carried?
Editor’s Note: Our readers responded strongly to this story when it originally ran; we’re reposting it here in case you missed it.
Americans have a long history of honoring their military heroes by electing them to high office.
At the same time, however, voters should not take kindly to candidates who leverage their military service for political gain. Nor should voters remain silent when politicians lie about a crucial aspect of their service so as to advance a political agenda hostile to freedom.
In a 31-second clip posted to the social media platform X on Aug. 6, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, whom Vice President and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris chose as her running mate, further exposed himself as a radical leftist tyrant while at the same time exhibiting a shocking indifference to truth that one can only explain as either ignorance or dishonesty.
“I spent 25 years in the Army, and I hunt,” Walz said.
Veteran observers of leftist politicians undoubtedly know what came next without seeing or hearing it. After all, a reference to hunting by an elected Democrat invariably signals an impending plea for gun control.
“I’ve been voting for common-sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment. But we can do background checks. We could do CDC research. We could make sure, we don’t have reciprocal carry among states,” he said.
Note the not-so-subtle connection between hunting and the Second Amendment, as if the Founding Fathers enshrined the right to bear arms in the Constitution for sporting purposes rather than the purpose of checking a tyrannical government filled with the likes of Walz.
Then came the crowning absurdity.
“And we can make sure that those weapons of war, that I carried in war, is the only place where those weapons are at,” Walz awkwardly said.
Gov. @Tim_Walz: I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. I’ve been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment, but we can do background checks. We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war,… pic.twitter.com/3IVaXi2RP2
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 6, 2024
Since Aug. 6, Walz has come under increasing scrutiny over both his military service and his subsequent characterizations of said service.
For instance, a former squad mate in the Minnesota Army National Guard has accused Walz of cowardice for skipping out on deployment to the Iraq War and thereby abandoning his men.
Meanwhile, Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio, an Iraq War veteran and former President Donald Trump’s running mate, expressed outrage.
“You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz?” Vance wrote on X on Aug. 7. “When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that’s shameful.”
You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz?
When the US Marine Corps asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it.
When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, he dropped out of the Army and allowed his unit to go without him. I think that’s shameful. pic.twitter.com/Dq9xjn4R51
— JD Vance (@JDVance) August 7, 2024
To say the least, Walz’s “weapons of war” comment will not help his case.
For one thing, the Minnesota governor never carried a weapon in war because he never went to war. But even that does not reflect the full measure of his ignorance or dishonesty.
By “weapons of war,” Walz almost certainly meant the AR-15 — the great leftist bugbear. But he did not tell the truth.
In fact, in 2022 GunMag Warehouse published an overview of arms used on the battlefield in Iraq. Walz, of course, was nowhere near Iraq, but had he been there he surely would have carried one of these weapons.
The overview highlighted eight different weapons systems, headed by the M4/M4A1 and the M16A2. Of course, it made no mention of the AR-15 because the AR-15 does not qualify as a “weapon of war.”
As a semi-automatic firearm, the AR-15 differs markedly from the fully automatic M4 and M16. The latter almost never come into the possession of civilians.
“To purchase a fully-automatic firearm requires an extensive FBI background check including fingerprints and photographs, as well as registration of the firearm at the federal level,” per the NRA-ILA.
Walz, therefore, has either an ignorance problem or a dishonesty problem. For one thing, he did not go to war. And even if he had, he would not have carried the weapon he and his fellow leftist radicals so desperately want to rip from the hands of law-abiding citizens — something only tyrants would do.
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