The political tide may be turning, or at least the people who wish to do away with the Second Amendment (2A) are acting like it is.
Since September of 2004, when the federal assault weapons ban expired, the "gun grabbers" have had a difficult time making progress on their agenda of eventually disarming law abiding Americans of their firearms. They've had to fight tooth and nail to whittle away at the 2A inch by inch, and those inches have been hard fought over. But they've always been fine to do it that way if they must. They're playing the long game, and the long game is almost always played in inches.
Every time there is another mass shooting, the left wing mainstream media (MSM) splashes it on every channel, newspaper and magazine in North America, and even sometimes it gains attention in Western Europe. When I say "mass shooting", of course I only mean the ones that don't occur daily in places like Chicago, Baltimore, St. Louis or any other democrat managed, gun control haven. As far as the MSM is concerned, mass shootings only take place in areas populated by people who look and live like the people who's hearts and minds they're trying to win. Sandy Hook is not populated by the same kind of people that populate the Englewood neighborhood in Chicago. The people who populate Englewood do not need to be convinced to side with the democrats. They've already got plenty of incentive to do so. The left wing needs to convince white suburbanites to side with them, so therefore, the MSM portrays mass shootings as mainly taking place in locations where white suburbanites live. They'll even tell you that the rest of the world doesn't have mass shooting events at all. Anders Breivik must have been a figment of our collective imagination. The claim is false, a lie, as the US isn't even in the top ten in the world when it comes to mass shooting deaths. France and Norway outrank the US, as do Finland and Belgium. Gang and drug related shootings often meet the numerical requirements of a "mass" shooting in the US, but those types of events aren't of any use to the left in the gun rights debate. So they're ignored.
The problem has so far been that gun owners and those white suburbanites haven't really bought into what the democrats are selling. At least not when it comes to guns. Support for additional gun control laws has still been at low levels. Too low for the democrats to pass any gun control legislation outside of their strongholds of NY, Kalifornia, Connecticut and a few others. In the last decade, they were even forced to start issuing concealed weapons permits in Illinois, though that system is still prohibitively difficult to navigate (by design, of course).
White suburbanites are simply either not paying attention and reacting the way the left needs them to. It has resulted in almost no movement on gun legislation at the federal level since 2004. There has been some movement in the individual states though. Most of the movement has been in a positive direction though. The number of open carry states stands now at about 45, depending on your interpretation. It would be more correct to say that there are only five states that totally ban the open carry of handguns.
But now back to the title. The anti-gun zealots are acting like they smell blood in the water. They're making a much harder effort to push the gun control narrative. The #NeverAgain movement, seemingly spearheaded by courageous high school students, but in reality led by backstage NGO and democrat party operatives, appears to be large in numbers. I say "appears to be" because things are not always as they appear. But it is obvious that they have significant numbers of participants in the various rallies they've held under the #NeverAgain banner.
The reason I think that they're smelling blood is because they're making the same efforts that they've made in the past after each major shooting, but this time some of it seems to having an effect. After past shooting events, the democrats in the states and at the federal level have knashed their teeth and hollered for new laws to enforce restrictions on law abiding gun owners, to nearly zero effect. Even when 0bama was in office, no leftward progress was made. At the state level, democrats watched almost helplessly as state after state passed laws to empower law abiding gun owners. Legalizing open carry became the trend. Only a few states were able to get any significant gun control laws rammed through. New York and Connecticut were among the few, but even Illinois and D.C. were forced to creat a legal concealed carry system (though they both are extremely resistant to issuing anyone a permit).
But the mass shooting in Las Vegas (LV), followed by the school shooting in Broward County, Florida has turned the tide of the ineffectiveness, or at least it has so far. At the federal level, the LV shooting immediately spurred calls for a ban of "bump stocks", which oddly enough, a lot of "gun rights supporters" seemed to be willing to give in to. At the state level, in my own state of Florida, the school shooting renewed an annual democrat party failure, the assault weapons ban (AWB). The propose AWB failed again, but a bump stock ban, age restrictions and waiting periods succeeded.
Another thing that succeeded in Florida was a proposal to arm school teachers. I'll be brief, this was not a victory for gun rights supporters. The bill text actually states that the only teachers eligible for carrying are those who do not exclusively perform classroom duties, and those who complete a state sanctioned school safety and gun safety course. The course must be approved by the county sheriff and district superintendent. Reading the text, I feel that the bill was written to actually block the vast majority of teachers of from being eligible. At my daugher's school, only two staff members are eligible, and the county has not approved at training program.
The "gun grabbers" are seeing a degree of success at the federal level that they haven't achieved since 2004. They have a president that has poked his finger in their eye at every turn, but has shown a propensity for returning to his New York roots. By that I mean liberalism. After the shooting in Broward, he did a 180 on what we thought his position would be and he endorsed and promised a ban on bump stocks. During the same meeting, he stated that national concealed carry permit reciprocity was a non-starter. During the meeting, Senator Feinstein, the queen of the senate gun control effort, was seen laughing maniacally and rubbing her hands together. Yeah, like a damn cartoon villain.
Now don't get me wrong. The democrats haven't really won a whole lot lately, Florida is just one state (though Florida is significant) and bump stocks are only one small piece. But prior to this recent small success, democrats had enjoyed nearly zero success outside of their deep blue strongholds, of which there are not many.
This success has been made possible by the legions of gun owners who said "just give them the bump stocks, we don't need them". They were willing to give an inch in the hopes that it would settle the anti crowd down. But does it ever? Have we not learned their ultimate goal? They aim to win the long game inch by inch. The problem is that they operate like a ratchet mechanism. Every time we give them an inch, that inch is gone. We almost never get it back. They take an inch by banning bump stocks, or raising the age limit for buying a gun to 21 years of age, or by enacting waiting periods, or magazine limits, or by adding hours to the concealed weapons permit class, or raising the fee... Understand? They do those little things and then let them sit for a while and become common, so that anyone who eventually raises the idea of changing them is met with the "it's always been this way" argument. That argument is probably responsible for more legislative inaction than any other. My point is that in this game of inches, we can't afford to EVER give them an inch, because of two things; We never get that inch back, and we already know that there is no stopping point before we get to total disarmament.
When WE take an inch, that inch is ALWAYS up for renegotiation, especially the next time there is an opportunity to use someone's blood to tip the scale to the left.
My final point during this rambling post (sorry, I've been a little disorganized) is that a compromise bill never is a real compromise. Case in point, the Florida law that imposed age restrictions, waiting periods, banned bump stocks and supposedly allows teachers to carry. The bill was hailed as some compromise that both sides weren't totally happy with, but could live with. In reality, as I stated, the law actually blocks most teachers from even being eligible to participate in the required training to carry on campus, and then the sheriff also has the authority to deny the program anyway. If the left sees that it's now able to grab some more inches by getting republicans to pass these lopsided compromise bills, then they've got a path to victory. Republicans are the ones who passed the law.
As a law abiding gun owner, I see a shift in sentiment going on. The left surely must see it as well. They're going to start circling like sharks to take more bites and if we gun rights supporters don't harden our resolve and quit giving inches away to appease the left for another year or two, we are going to have to explain to our kids what freedom was like.
There is only one reason to disarm a people.
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