Front Sight, Press

The financial melt-down and the subsequent attempts by the Bush administration to throw money at the problem in the hope that it will go away strike me as the final “nails in the coffin” for Republican election hopes in November 2008. While I know that the roots of the problem in the mortgage market go back as far as the Carter administration, and were nurtured by the Clinton regime, the Republicans have been at the helm of the executive branch for eight years now, and the blame will mostly fall on them from an electorate that chooses not to do its own research. It may not be completely fair, but such is the nature of the political beast. I think also that the administration should have been more vigilant in this matter. It didn’t have to get this bad. Further, if you’re going to champion “free market capitalism” why turn socialist when the going gets rough? Shouldn’t Darwin get his pound of Wall Street’s flesh?

I watched John McCain closely last night in the first presidential debate against Barak Obama. What I saw in McCain was an elder statesman, competent, intelligent, accomplished and even likeable, but he is no Moses who will part the sea and lead the children out of the wilderness to the Promised Land. He is no Reagan, no JFK, not even a William Jefferson Clinton, and it would take a Moses to pull this one out of the fire for the Republicans. Unless John McCain learns to walk on water in short order, we are staring down the barrel of an electoral apocalypse.

After the week’s economic convulsions, with no certain solution ahead, I am more convinced than ever that the Democrats will sweep the November elections, including the Whitehouse. “Winning in Iraq” will not matter when people begin to see their paychecks bouncing, their jobs disappearing, no gas at the pumps, and a government cast adrift from the conservative principles for which it was elected. I had some hope for McCain and Palin until the full fury of the financial storm made landfall last week. Those hopes are gone now.

I actually care about a broad range of issues, and I don’t always walk in lock-step with “conservative” positions, but the primary lens through which my political involvement has been shaped is gun rights, and it has been that way for a very long time. It’s too late to change even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. Guns are my beat. For that reason, I will choke down my sense of futility and vote for McCain in November because McCain and Palin are better on gun rights than Obama and Biden. I have some issues with John McCain on gun rights, but at least, he is not openly hostile to Second Amendment rights in the way Obama and Biden are.

The most probable scenario for November is a win for Obama-Biden and an enhancement of the Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. There have been too many missteps, failures and scandals with the Republicans for me to think otherwise. With a profoundly gun-unfriendly administration and Congress in power, a new and expansive “Assault Weapons Ban” is all but a done deal. An effort to roll back shall-issue concealed carry must surely be in the works as we speak. Other “back door” gun control options will certainly be pursued such as licensing schemes and ways to make ammunition all but unattainable.

What’s a gunny to do?

First of all, we’re going to have to remember how to play this game without the home court advantage. The NRA is not going to have “an office in the Whitehouse.” Fuggitaboutit. You’re not going to see any photo ops of Obama firing an MP5. The Democratic platform on gun control was written by the most extreme gun prohibitionists they could find. The handwriting is on the wall. It’s going to get rough.

We are going to have to get better organized and more aggressive for our cause. The first six years of the Bush administration spoiled us in many ways. The administration was fairly comfortable with the status quo and we could count on a friendly congress to protect and in some cases further the cause of gun rights. We have become lazy and soft, lured into a false sense of complacency that somehow the government was on our side. We have allowed our grassroots organizations to deteriorate and our activism has grown lethargic. Yes, everyone has a blog these days but that’s not the same as having “boots on the ground” to turn out the vote.

We need to make more inroads to the liberals and moderates. Second Amendment rights are a constitutional issue, and in theory, people on both wings of the spectrum should care that the Constitution is upheld and respected. Contrary to popular perception, there actually are quite a few “liberals” who care about gun rights and armed self-defense. No single political party should have a monopoly on the “gun vote.” Can we persuade people to support the Second Amendment without demanding that they buy into the whole package of “social conservatism”? By “social conservatism” I mean anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigration, etc. I know that this will be very distasteful to many who read it, but I think the linkage between gun rights and social conservatism needs to be dissolved or at least mitigated to a significant degree. No party should be able to count on our vote or opposition just because of the animal on their lapel pin. They should have to earn it. As it stands now, the Democrats simply write us off because they assume that we will vote Republican, and they form their policies and platforms accordingly. From a political point of view, the past four years have gone very badly for the Republicans and it may be a decade or more before we again see a Republican president and Congress. We will have to adapt to a very different political climate, one that is far more hostile to the Second Amendment than even the Clinton administration.

Be prepared for “civil disobedience.” I’m not going to say a whole lot about this because I don’t want the guys with the shiny shoes on my doorstep, but, “Him who has ears, let him hear.”

I hope I’m really, really wrong. I hope that right now in a motel room somewhere, John McCain is learning the secret to parting the sea and turning water into wine. I’m not holding my breath.

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

- Samuel Adams, speech at the Philadelphia State House,
August 1, 1776