Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday spoke at the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event held at the University of Mississippi, and answered a question from a citizen of Memphis, who questioned Vance about the arrests by the Memphis Safe Task Force involving firearms.
Telling Vance that he drove from Memphis to ask the vice president a question, the audience member asked if the nearly 400 firearms recovered by the Memphis Safe Task Force contradict the pledge by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that is friendlier to the Second Amendment.
A data portal maintained by the City of Memphis shows that 378 illegal firearms have been recovered since the federal task force deployed on September 30, while 1,792 arrests have occurred. Total reports of serious crimes have dropped 46.4 percent since 2024, while all calls for police service have dropped 19.5 percent.
“We don’t want people who have violated the law, who have committed felonies,” to possess firearms, said Vance. It is illegal for most felons to possess a firearm.
“The Second Amendment, like every other amendment, it’s about due process. It’s that you don’t have your rights violated unless there is due process of law,” the vice president said. “If you’re a person who’s committed four felonies and a court has lawfully ordered that you shouldn’t have a gun, and you’re running around with a firearm, I don’t have any problem with law enforcement saying you don’t get to have that firearm that is illegally possessed, illegally obtained.”
Calling it “basic law and order,” Vance clarified that he remains opposed to empowering courts to ban citizens from possessing firearms without a criminal conviction, which would appear to include red flag laws.
“That’s not what we’re focused on,” said Vance. “What we’re focused on is violent crime and people who have violated, you know, the the bodily autonomy of another human people, a person who has committed an act of violence against one of their fellow citizens.”
He told the Memphian, “We’re going to clean up the streets, get those people off the streets, and make America safe for the American citizens.”
Another member of the crowd appeared to ask Vance generally about the task force model, specifically whether it could be used by Democratic administrations to target Republicans in the future.
“It’s going to sound like I’m being sarcastic, and it it really is is not meant in in any offense, but when you talk about what could another administration do to take a wild hypothetical example, totally off the top of my head, what if Joe Biden sent the Federal Bureau of Investigation to start arresting his political opponents?” Vance questioned.
He told the crowd, “we cannot be afraid to do something because the left might do it in the future,” and said the statement was a key part of his political philosophy.
“The left is already going to do it regardless of whether we do it. That that is that is the takeaway of the last 40 years,” said Vance. “What I’m worried about, frankly, is what the far-left already did with American law enforcement.”
Vance spoke at the university with Erika Kirk, the widow of TPUSA founder Charlie Kirk, exactly seven weeks after her husband was assassinated while holding a similar event at a college campus in Utah.
Watch Vance’s full remarks about the Memphis Safe Task Force:
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Vice President JD Vance” by The White House.
Vance makes it clear he’s targeting illegally possessed guns, not law-abiding gun owners.
As long as due process is respected, cracking down on violent offenders shouldn’t conflict with the Second Amendment.
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