Francesca Hong’s verbal gymnastics on CNN this week are a textbook example of how progressive candidates try to walk back their most toxic positions without ever admitting they were wrong. When pressed about her past support for defunding the police, Hong offered the kind of circular non-answer that would make a campaign consultant proud: “I think that what my values are are where some of my beliefs are as well.” Translation: she still believes the same thing but now understands it’s electoral poison in a state where violent crime has surged since 2020. For the 2A community, this is a familiar pattern—politicians who once cheered the gutting of law enforcement suddenly discover that an armed citizenry becomes the only reliable backstop when the state retreats from its core duty to protect.
The timing is no accident. Wisconsin’s crime statistics tell the story the left refuses to acknowledge: Milwaukee alone saw homicides jump over 90 percent in the two years after the George Floyd riots, while carjackings and retail theft rings turned once-safe suburbs into open-air crime scenes. Hong’s refusal to plainly repudiate “defund” reveals the deeper ideological commitment that still animates much of the Democratic bench—hostility to policing paired with hostility to the individual right to keep and bear arms. The 2A community should treat this as a warning label: any candidate who cannot say “I was wrong about defunding the police” will almost certainly be hostile to shall-issue carry, constitutional carry, and the right of self-defense in the home.
What makes Hong’s performance especially useful for gun owners is how cleanly it exposes the bait-and-switch. Progressive candidates now claim they never meant to abolish police departments, only to “reimagine” them—yet the same politicians simultaneously push magazine bans, red-flag laws, and restrictions on the very firearms citizens would need if policing truly were reimagined downward. The lesson for Wisconsin voters and the broader 2A movement is straightforward: when a candidate cannot give a straight answer on whether they still support defunding the police, assume their “values” have not changed and vote accordingly.
