Not that this was news, but it seems I am not the only gun nut who's not satisfied with the candidates the GOP elites are pushing for President in '08...
Josh Sugarmann is part of the Huffington Post stable of leftist political commentators. He has written virulently against gun ownership, the right to personal defense, and like most lefties, he only supports those parts of the Bill of Rights he agrees with and you'll be shocked to hear that the 2nd Amendment isn't one of those parts. None-the-less, even a stopped clock is right twice a day and he pretty well sums up John McCain's "Gun Problem" for voters like me......The gun lobby and its rank and file view the campaign finance law as an outrageous infringement on their free speech rights while the effort to regulate gun show sales is viewed as a direct attack on the Second Amendment and liberty itself....
John McCain's views on the 2nd Amendment are poison to me. I will not vote for him. Same goes for Rudy Giuliani. Same goes for Hillary Clinton. I hold no allegiance to any political party. I will vote for whomever has worked the hardest -- proven by their history of voting -- to preserve the 2nd Amendment, as well as all the others.
Say what you will, but that pretty much speaks for itself, and I have absolutely no doubt Jeff is speaking for many gun owners in this country. Many in the Pachyderm Party steadfastly proclaim that the Republicans are the party that most consistently supports and defends the natural right to arms, but politicians like Giuliani and McCain (and they're certainly not the only ones) seriously undermine that contention to the extent that it's true in the first place. And as the clock ticks on, I grow ever more weary of those who proclaim to be on our side yet basically tell us gun owners to "just sit down, shut up and vote for who we tell you that you should vote for." I know good and well that there's a war on right now. I know that if we don't win it, nothing else will matter, and I yield to no one in my belief in the grave existential threat posed by Islamic extremism. But the fact is that every one of the issues that we had to deal with before 9-11 -- immigration, spending, the national debt, taxes, the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security, gun laws, etc. -- did not cease to be important when the Twin Towers fell. What I am about to say shouldn't really be news to the self-appointed, self-important elite -- then again, no one ever actually accused them of being all that intelligent, as far as I know -- but basically telling 60 million voting-age people that their concerns don't matter, especially on an issue so central to American culture and who we are as a people, an issue which sparked the war that brought our nation into existence, isn't going to win them any friends, and, what's more, it for damn sure isn't going to win their preferred candidate any votes. I would almost go so far as to say it's tantamount to political suicide. It's bad enough when you're told that your concerns don't matter when it comes to comparatively petty things like relationships. (Trust me, I know that all too well.) It's absolutely infuriating when you're told that when it comes to bedrock convictions and principles like the natural right to self-defense.
I suppose some might think I am beating a dead horse here, but it's always best to go on the offensive and get all the facts out there when the hour is early and we still have choices. And no matter how limited those choices may realistically be as far as pro-gun candidates go, there has to be better than McCain or Giuliani...and that point will be nailed often here and elsewhere between now and 2008.
Of course, looking at the roster of contributors at the
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