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“Big Tent” vital to defend gun rights
April 20, 2008 | Tagged Activism, Big Tent, Colorado, Election, Freedom, Second Amendment | Leave a Comment
If we are going to be successful in defending our natural right to self-defense against the nanny state liberals who would disarm us in the name of “community rights,” we need to minimize name calling and bitterness against our brothers and sisters who agree with us on this issue. I attended a hearing the other day, where one representative of a “true blue” gun rights group could not resist taking potshots at his compatriots.
I believe that “politics is the art of the possible” and that we are not going to recover all of our lost rights at one time. To use the football analogy, we can’t expect to win the game, if we throw the long, “Hail Mary” pass to the end zone on every play. We have lost many of our rights to incrementalist socialism. We will only get our freedoms back the same way, bit by bit, as we remind the American People about the Founders’ intent in writing the Second Amendment as a recognition of a fundamental right of the people, not as a power of either the state or federal governments.
In addition to recovering lost rights, we must take great care not to lose more of our freedom to inane social experiments, such as gun bans, ammunition bans, taxes, microstamping, “safe storage” laws, and other attempts to disarm honest citizens, while leaving armed felons free to rape, murder, and kill.
This is a critical election year. The next President of the U.S. gets up to three Supreme Court nominations. State legislatures will redraw congressional districts in 2010. If the Republicans and smaller numbers of pro-gun Democrats do not win in November, we can expect to see gun bans, concealed carry rollbacks, and further serious erosion of our rights.
“Party trumps person.” The party in power controls leadership, committees, and agendas in any political arena. So far, in Colorado this year, pro gun rights bills died, while only hard lobbying kept the worst of the anti individual rights bills from passing. The session isn’t over yet.
I hear some “true blue” gun owners say, “Let the Liberals win and screw up the country. We’ll get it back later, one way or the other.” If the Liberals win the election this year, they are likely to pass more “campaign finance reform” laws to throttle free speech and allow soft money to decide future elections. They will redraw the congressional district boundaries to create “safe” districts for Democrat Party members.
If either of the ultra-left wing Democrat candidates win the White House, the Supreme Court will look much different and be much more unfriendly to our interests for decades!
We simply can not afford to squabble among ourselves. We have to get out and WORK for electable candidates who are most likely to support our rights.
I am not a great fan of John McCain on gun rights, or campaign finance, although I do support his stand in the War on Terror. No other candidate has a chance to stop HRC or BHO. I would encourage everyone who owns a gun or believes in freedom to get out and WORK for electable pro-gun candidates. That means delivering literature, stuffing envelopes, waving signs at rallies, and making phone calls for pro gun rights state and county party organizations and campaigns at all levels.
State races in Colorado are critical this year, as are the Congressional and Senate races. Pick a candidate. Call the campaign and get out ASAP and work to defend your rights. If you do not WORK for and vote your legal gun rights this year, you will lose them. Oh, and by the way, be nice to your brothers and sisters. We are all in this together.