Daines, Bullock contrast on gun rights

Falkor Defense owner Jason Sonju is nervous about how the upcoming election will affect his Kalispell-based company.

Falkor’s 50,000-square-foot facility specializes in firearms manufacturing and aerospace technology, and is among a growing number of Flathead Valley companies working within the firearms realm.

Sonju said the company and its dozens of employees need consistency in Second Amendment legislation in order to prosper.

“For us, it’s scary during the election cycles,” Sonju said last week during a meeting with Sen. Steve Daines, R-Montana, and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas. “You don’t know from one Congress to the next what’s going to happen. It’s hard to invest into that future because of uncertainty.”

Sonju told the senators it can be risky to invest in new manufacturing technology for firearms that might be banned under a different Congress.

“Right now I’m selling everything I can build,” Sonju said. “But next year, the year after, you always wonder, if we’re going to buy another $300,000 or $400,000 machine, are we going to have that business [in the future]?”

Sonju said he believes incumbent Sen. Daines is the right candidate to protect the Second Amendment in the upcoming race for U.S. Senate, adding that he believes Daines’ opponent, Gov. Steve Bullock, would be influenced by Democrats in Washington, D.C., on gun rights issues.

“We have a responsibility to educate the next generation of what the Second Amendment was put in place for,” Daines told Sonju during the meeting at Falkor. “The left will say it’s primarily about hunting. But the Founding Fathers weren’t afraid of antelope and whitetails. It was a fundamental issue of liberty and freedom.”

At the meeting with Sonju and in recent debates, Daines took Bullock to task for stating in a 2018 interview that he’d support a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

When asked in that interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper if he would support a ban, Bullock replied, “You know, I would, Jake.”

“If we really step back for a minute. I think most folks, be it in Montana or elsewhere, that are firearms owners, want to keep themselves and families safe.”

Daines says a ban of semi-automatic weapons would lead to a slippery slope.

“Once you cross the line of banning one particular platform of firearm,” Daines asked Sonju, “where do you end it?”

Bullock walked back his comments on a semi-automatic weapon ban at the last debate Oct. 10, stating “No, I wouldn’t ban semi-automatic weapons.”

He then added that he’d be open to a discussion about assault weapons.

“Dick’s and Wal-Mart, they don’t even sell them,” Bullock said. “They’re not used for self-defense. They’re not used for hunting.”

In a 2018 op-ed, Bullock wrote that concerns about gun violence are personal to him. In the piece he wrote that in 1994 his 11-year-old nephew was shot and killed on a playground by another student in Butte.

“Jeremy Bullock was the unintended victim of what was, at the time, our nation’s youngest school yard shooting,” Bullock wrote.

He said that experience, along with his family’s hunting tradition, have helped shape his gun policy views.

Bullock supports universal background checks and says so-called red flag laws save lives, but he breaks from the Democratic Party on other gun policy proposals.

In a statement from Bullock’s campaign, Press Secretary Sean Manning notes that the governor voted against the national Democratic platform “because he did not agree with many of its policies, including on gun rights.”

“Every time he has bought a gun, he has gone through a violent history background check, and believes that everyone should go through them too,” Manning stated. “The governor does not support the confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens, nor does he think it’s appropriate for gun companies to be held responsible for their products.”

Manning also said Bullock does not support mandatory gun buybacks or laws that dictate what people have to do with their firearms in their own homes.

Daines describes gun violence as a broader issue than the firearms themselves.

“More gun control would not have prevented many of these tragedies we see across our country,” Daines said at a Sept. 28 debate. “This is an issue of violence and mental health.”

Bullock believes gun violence should be looked at as a public-health issue and agrees that more investment into the mental-health system is needed.

“As governor, he made record investments in Montana’s mental-health system, expanding crisis intervention and treatment, and he plans to build on that record in the Senate,” Manning stated.

Daines is seeking a second term in the U.S. Senate. He was elected as Montana’s lone representative in the U.S. House in 2012.

Bullock was Montana’s Attorney General before being elected governor.

The two are in a tight race, with the latest poll from Public Policy Polling showing a dead heat.

Managing Editor Matt Baldwin may be reached at 758-4447 or mbaldwin@dailyinterlake.com.