It’s seldom that I agree with everything that someone may write, and this article by Jonah Goldberg is an example.
In one regard, he’s quite correct: the NRA is not the behemoth of the lobbying world — they should be so lucky — that the screeching moonbats of the Left say they are; that’s just theater, and only the gullible (i.e. the Left’s target market) would believe it.
In fact, to a large proportion of gun owners (myself included), the NRA often compromises far too much with the foul gun controllers, but that’s not what I want to talk about right now.
Goldberg misses the point when he makes the case about politicians (especially red-state politicians) pandering to their constituent voters when it comes to The Gun Thing. Yes they do, of course, because heaven forbid that an elected politician should actually [gasp] represent the wishes of his constituents. But it’s not all about that. Let’s at least give our guys a little credit in that most of them believe and support the Second Amendment themselves — I know, the Left are passing out round about now — and thus there’s no pandering going on at all.
To expand upon another of Goldberg’s points: what the Left fails to understand is that the NRA isn’t the gorilla in the room; in fact, the NRA is the very smallest tip of the iceberg of gun owners in this country who are not only gun owners, but who are also committed to the principle of the Second Amendment — maybe even more than the NRA claims to be. So, as Goldberg says:
This is why gun control is a great issue for Democratic fundraising — but an even better issue for Republican get-out-the-vote efforts.
Here, at least, he’s 100% correct.
And in conclusion, let me suggest that before Hillary Bitch Clinton goes on her next anti-gun tirade, she should dismiss her Secret Service detail altogether. Of course she won’t because this socialist sow knows quite well that it’s guns that protect her from harm — and We The People deserve no less protection. We don’t even need someone else to do it for us.
Not that the rancid cow would ever acknowledge that. She, and all her little acolytes on the Left, want us to be helpless.
Sorry, Madame Commissar: that ain’t gonna happen. Now FOAD, you irrelevant Commie tart.
Yep. and the currently elected officals will find themselves, Trump included, bounce out of office in the next election if they don’t start doing what we elected them to do.
You want to keep a job you need to do what you say you can do.
Once you realize that the NRA is first, last and always a fundraising organization chiefly benefiting LaPierre and Knox and some other cronies, it all makes sense.
They lost me forever when they endorsed Dirty Harry Reid the last time around.
Knox????
Are we talking about the Late Neal Knox, who butted heads with Wayne over the “Assault Weapon Ban” back in the 90’s, and lost his position on the BoD?
They didn’t endorse the last time around. Time before that (2004), yeah. Whatever his other faults, he was fairly good on guns back in the day. Which is the only thing the NRA should care about.
Every time there’s a mass shooting or other high profile event involving a gun, we get the tiresome and predictible bitching of the anti-gunners about the EEEEVIL NRA and how the NRA and its gun industry masters have bought the Republican party.
We also get the lauding of UK or Australia style gun control (i.e. government confiscation) and the wailing that “If the UK and Australia can do it, we can too!”
Uh, no. Not gonna happen and BTW, it has NOTHING to do with the NRA or the money it spends.
As Goldberg points out, it’s about the numbers. I don’t know what gun ownership was in Australia at the time they enacted their draconian gun control laws but it was small – certainly nowhere NEAR the 40% of households that it is in the US.
Sorry, gun controllers, but you cannot just steamroll over 2/5 of the country. You just can’t, no matter how much you piss and moan, stamp your feet or hold your breath until you turn blue in the face.
The sad irony of the efforts of gun controllers is that the “gun rights” movement as it exists today is a REACTION to the success of gun control in the 1960’s and 70’s. Hell, I would argue that the NRA nothwithstanding, the real “gun rights” movement didn’t start until 1993 when Clinton took office.
Put another way, we would have a lot MORE “gun control” today if the gun controllers of the past had not been so successful. After all, gun owners are a notoriously cranky and solitary lot, and banding together for political activism isn’t really something we’re used to doing. It was only in the face of the success of previous gun control efforts that gun owners finally flexed their political muscle.
And no matter how much the gun controllers might try to wish it away, organized gun-rights people are now a force to be reckoned with and if the NRA disappeared into a puff of smoke tomorrow, that would not change things one bit – another player would simply step in to the void left by the NRA.
Gun controllers are too blinded by their anger and too ignorant to realize two important truths:
First, that with 40% of households owning guns, there simply will NEVER be a major nationwide gun control law passed unless they can get the consent and willing participation of a significant portion of gun owners,
And second, that every time the hurl invective at gun owners (usually following some spectacular shooting) , call gun owners selfish assholes who don’t care about dead babies, call them sexually frustrated dumbass redneck racists, etc etc etc, it only makes the reasonable, middle-of-the-road, more-or-less apolitical gun owners dig in their heels and join the gun rights group as a means of self protection.
Gun controllers are shooting themselves in the foot, because when it comes to guns, they don’t know what they’re talking about.
Kim, Kim, Kim…..you really need to stop sugar-coating it, and tell us how you really feel.
“Of course she won’t because this socialist sow…” enjoys having a platoon of free coat-holders and door-openers.
It’s funny that Clinton professes to admire Eleanor Roosevelt, even to “communing with her spirit”. But Mrs. Roosevelt refused to have a Secret Service escort, even as First Lady. The head of the Secret Service finally insisted that if she would not have an escort, she should at least be armed for self-defense . So she accepted a .38 revolver, which she was trained with, and carried it for the rest of her life (as when in the 1950s, she spoke at civil rights rallies in the South, in spite of KKK threats).
Eleanor Roosevelt was thousands of times classier than Shrillary. Not too surprising; she was notably classier than her swine husband, too.
And she carried a gun most of the time. She may have been FDR’s wife (sort of) but she was also TR’s niece.
The thing is, the Gun Grabbers desperately want to make the issue about nearly ANYTHING but the inconvenient Amendment. Oh, a couple off them broke cover last week, and some have previously, but in general they know damned well they absolutely cannot afford to admit that they want to gut the 2nd Amendment, if only because it might draw attention to the fact that they want to gut the rest of the Bill of Rights, too.
So they rant about the NRA (which wields considerably less influence than, say, the Teachers’ Unions…and more legally, too), and they say they want a ‘serious conversation’ about gun control (which is the very LAST thing they want).
For leftists, “We need to have a conversation” or “there needs to be a national conversation” is an Orwellian way of saying “you need to shut up and let me harangue you.”
To which my stock response is “I don’t need to do a GOD damned thing.”
Well, how did John Ross put it?
“The only downside to gun control is genocide”
We know EXACTLY what that awful bitch is after, and she can’t have it.
I would correct one word in your commentary……the very last one. It starts with the right letter, and has the correct number of letters, but the last three should be -u-r-d. Her Highness HRC in no way rises to as high a level as tart-dom. In this particular case, I think the crudeness is apropos.