Rep. Ro Khanna’s claim that Republicans “eliminated due process” by passing the Laken Riley Act is the kind of rhetorical sleight-of-hand that gun owners have seen for decades: take a narrow, common-sense measure aimed at keeping dangerous people off the streets and paint it as an existential assault on constitutional rights. The Act simply requires the detention of illegal immigrants charged with theft, burglary, or assault—hardly a novel suspension of rights, but rather an overdue recognition that sovereign nations get to decide who remains inside their borders. For the 2A community, the parallel is obvious: the same voices now decrying “lost due process” for non-citizens have spent years arguing that law-abiding Americans must first prove their “need” or “good character” before exercising a fundamental right. If due process is truly sacred, it should apply first to citizens whose Second Amendment rights are routinely delayed, denied, or litigated into oblivion by may-issue permitting schemes and red-flag laws.
The deeper implication is that progressive rhetoric is shifting from “common-sense gun safety” to “common-sense immigration safety” only when it suits the narrative; otherwise, enforcement itself is framed as cruelty. Gun owners who have watched the ATF rewrite pistol-brace rules or push universal background checks without legislation recognize the tactic: manufacture a crisis, expand bureaucratic power, then accuse critics of opposing safety itself. Khanna’s framing also reveals the selective originalism on the left—due process is suddenly paramount for foreign nationals in the country unlawfully, yet the same principle is dismissed when it comes to shall-issue concealed-carry or protecting the right to keep and bear arms without a permission slip. The Laken Riley Act is not a precedent for stripping rights; it is a precedent for applying law equally, something the 2A community has demanded for years while watching prosecutors and judges treat illegal-alien offenders with kid gloves.
Ultimately, the fight over the Act is a reminder that constitutional protections were designed for the people who constitute the polity, not as a global passport for anyone who crosses the border. When Democrats argue that requiring detention of criminal illegal immigrants somehow voids due process, they are testing the same logic they have long applied to gun owners: redefine a right downward until enforcement becomes impossible, then blame the resulting disorder on the law-abiding. The 2A community should watch this rhetorical migration closely; if due process can be stretched to shield non-citizens from the consequences of illegal entry and subsequent crime, the same expansive reading will inevitably be turned against the enumerated rights of citizens.
