Democrats deeply hostile to guns

The debate over the 2nd Amendment as it pertains to our political system usually revolves around who will safeguard the right to keep and bear arms. Does this pol support the 2nd Amendment? Does he or she vote the ‘right’ way? Is there someone better? These questions are asked by “single issue” RTKBA types for whom the politics of the 2nd amendment is the make or break issue.

Many gun owners don’t see it this way, though. While there may be too little discernible difference between the GOP and the Democrats, any objective analysis would tell you that, in general, the Democrat party is far more hostile to the 2nd amendment as an individual right than are the Republicans.

And please spare me examples like Dick Lugar. Save the whining about weak-kneed GOPers. I’ll stipulate that right now. But all that acknowledged, the reality is that the Democrats’ hostility to what most gun owners see as a ‘proper’ view of the 2nd Amendment is baked into the party cake. Dick Lugar is an outlier, Barbara Boxer is the mean.

Why then do so many anti-gun Democrats get support from otherwise pro-gun voters? I think it comes down to the weight one applies to constitutional rights versus temporal needs and wants. Someone who votes for a Democrat because they like what that Democrat says about corporate governance, health care reform or fill-in-the-blank is deciding that those issues matter more than their baseline hostility to gun rights that candidate’s party displays.
Fair enough, it is a free country. Vote your conscience and all that.

Nevertheless, I want to speak bluntly about what this means. The so-called progressives of today are working for a number of changes in the size, scope and role of government – particularly the federal government. Their party is, unquestionably, hostile to the 2nd Amendment as understood by anyone with at least a 6th grade education.

When I interviewed the Occupy Wall Street (St. Louis Branch) folks here in my beloved Gateway City, six out of seven were vocal supporters of the 2nd Amendment as an individual right, as a means of self-defense and as a last bastion of defense against tyranny.
And yet…

All were good liberals with all the fashionable goals of equality of outcome and a willingness to give Government enormous power and authority over economic activity. They were in lockstep support of the party that receives nearly 100% of the political and financial support of the likes of the Brady Campaign. If the OWS-STL kids are successful in sweeping from power the mean old GOP, how soon before gun bans and gun control return with a vengeance? Once disarmed, where will they turn if they find the tyranny of their own choosing not to their liking?

Again, this is not an apologia for the Republican party. There are some smart and decent leaders in the party but they are obscured by a thick blanket of feckless wankers. In many cases, it’s a damned shame candidates from both parties can’t lose.

That said, for the GOP, candidates with a hostility to the 2nd Amendment is an unusual bug. With Democrats it’s a qualifying feature. Vote for who you want, but if you vote for the party that has worked tirelessly since the mid sixties to strip Americans of our RTKBA, leave your NRA card at home before you head to the polling station.

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PA: Man pulls out gun to ward off armed robbery try: "If it happened again, Samuel Smith said, he wouldn’t hesitate to use his gun on another person to protect himself. Smith, 24, of Ashley, made a split second decision and fired a round into the ground when two young men demanded that he empty his pockets on Reese Street near South Meade Street Wednesday night. Smith said he was hanging out with a friend outside a house sitting on a curb just before 9 p.m. After his friend went into a house, Smith said he noticed two men walk slowly pass him, describing them as a black male in his upper teens and a white male in his early 20s. As the two men walked by, Smith had an uneasy feeling and loaded a magazine into his gun and reholstered the weapon. A minute or two after the men walked past, he said, they approached him asking for a cigarette. When Smith said he didn’t smoke, he claimed the black male pushed a firearm against his body. When he did, Smith extended his other hand grasping his gun and fired a round in the ground. “They ran away, the black kid ran toward Little Flower Manor, and the white kid ran the other way stripping off his clothes,” Smith said."