Old Videos Show El-Sayed Questioned Second Amendment's Individual Right

A new report from the National Association for Gun Rights says Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed scrubbed old YouTube videos in which he floated swapping the Second Amendment for a "right to health care" and questioned whether the amendment protects individual gun ownership at all.

Key points

• The 2023 clip: Gunrights.org cites an April 2023 video where El-Sayed asks what would happen if the Constitution were "tweaked" to replace the right to bear arms with a right to health care.
• The 2022 clip: A separate May 2022 video reportedly has El-Sayed arguing the Second Amendment only covers a "well-regulated militia" or police, not individual citizens, a reading the piece notes the Supreme Court rejected in District of Columbia v. Heller.
• The scrubbing: The article claims El-Sayed hid roughly 100 YouTube videos before launching his campaign, these two among them.
• The campaign response: When pressed, El-Sayed's campaign reportedly said he "respects the Second Amendment" without addressing or retracting the earlier remarks.
• The endorsement: GIFFORDS PAC has backed El-Sayed, with Gabby Giffords saying she trusts him to oppose "the gun lobby," which the article presents as confirmation of his stance.

Quick take

This is an advocacy piece from a gun-rights PAC, not neutral reporting, and it says so in its own fine print. That doesn't mean the underlying video clips aren't worth knowing about if you're voting in Michigan. Worth reading the sourcing yourself before you decide how much weight to put on it.

Read the full story: gunrights.org