Haley Stevens: ‘Time for the Assault Rifles to Go’

Two new polls show Rep. Haley Stevens is struggling in her bid to become the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Michigan, including a survey by Emerson College showing her running 15 points behind Abdul El-Sayed. 

Even Stevens’ staunch support for gun control doesn’t seem to be endearing her to Michigan Democrats, despite a long track record of embracing some of the gun control lobby’s most extreme positions. 

In 2018, for instance, Stevens declared it was “time for assault rifles to go.” 

The assault rifles have had their day. That is what I’m hearing from people throughout my district. They’re saying that it’s time for the assault rifles to go, that we need to ban the bump stocks, and we need to protect our community.

In that same debate, Stevens compared the United States to Iraq, proclaiming “This is America, not Fallujah.”

That’s true. This is America, not Fallujah. And in the eight years since Stevens made that outrageous comparison, violent crime has both spiked (in 2020) and declined to lows not seen in decades. Homicides in the United States in 2025 were the lowest since at least 1960, and according to some experts, the lowest since at least 1900. 

The murder rate continues to fall this year. The Crime Index reports an 18.1 percent decline in homicides from January to the end of May, which puts the U.S. on pace for a homicide rate around 3.4 per 100,000. And contrary to what Stevens claimed, the semi-automatic rifles she mislabeled “assault rifles” are the most popular rifle in the country… and the ban she wanted to foist on the American people will likely be ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court next term. 

In addition to backing a federal ban on so-called assault weapons, Haley has co-sponsored many other gun control bills during her time in Congress.

Abdul El-Sayed is no better on the Second Amendment than Stevens, but he’s not been nearly as outspoken as Stevens when it comes to criminalizing our right to keep and bear arms. Neither candidate is making gun control a top issue in their campaigns, with Stevens vaguely talking about “commonsense gun safety laws” on her website and El-Sayed avoiding the topic altogether. 

Why is that? Probably because both candidates know that their stances on gun control aren’t nearly as popular among Michiganders at large as they are among their anti-gun donors. We just saw 2,500 women turn out in Taylor, Michigan for a weekend of free firearm training, and I highly doubt they were all Republicans. The policies that Stevens has backed would cripple their ability to exercise their Second Amendment rights, and would make it much harder for them to put their training to use if they ever need to defend themselves. 

RNC spokesman Hunter Lovell tells Bearing Arms that Stevens “is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, pushing draconian gun laws that put the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Michiganders on the chopping block while pandering to the far-left activists bankrolling her campaign.”

Lovell added that Stevens “isn’t running to represent Michigan; she’s running to represent the coastal elites who want to rewrite the Constitution.” That doesn’t seem to be playing too well among Democrat primary voters in Michigan at the moment, but no matter who emerges as the Democrats’ candidate for U.S. Senate, their contempt for the Second Amendment should motivate gun owners to turn out in opposition come November.  

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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