PA Bill Number: SB1198
Title: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and ...
Description: In plants and plant products, providing for plant and pollinator protection; conferring powers and duties on the Department of Agriculture and .. ...
Last Action: Referred to AGRICULTURE AND RURAL AFFAIRS
Last Action Date: May 17, 2024
Gun owners. . . have lost trust in the political class, says gun rights leader :: 05/06/2016
“Gun owners and people concerned about personal security have lost trust in the political class to protect their rights,” said nationally-recognized Second Amendment advocate Alan Gottlieb, in a story published yesterday by the Washington Free Beacon, and gun sales over the past four months suggest he’s right.
Gottlieb is founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, and chairman of SAF’s sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Both groups are headquartered in Bellevue, just across Lake Washington to the east of Seattle.
What he told the Free Beacon might alarm political elites in both major political parties as much as anti-gunners. He predicted that “This record setting firearm sales trend will continue all the way to Election Day.”
And, he added, “If Hillary Clinton wins, firearm sales will really go through the roof.”
Clinton has made no secret of her contempt for the so-called “gun lobby,” of which SAF and CCRKBA are certainly part. The main target of her spite, however, has been the National Rifle Association, which gathers later this month in Louisville for its annual convention. SAF and NRA are currently partners with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) in a legal challenge to the City of Seattle’s so-called “gun violence tax.”
As if to underscore his remarks, yesterday Gottlieb blistered another political elite, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg, over remarks the former New York mayor made over the weekend in a commencement speech he gave at the University of Michigan. Bloomberg warned against the creation of “safe space” zones on university campuses, and Gottlieb reacted with a scathing statement about the ex-mayor’s hypocrisy.
“Disarming honest citizens and leaving them vulnerable to unspeakable violence is not simply dishonest, it is delusional.”—Alan Gottlieb
“Even when he was serving as New York mayor,” Gottlieb said, “Bloomberg championed efforts to turn cities into ‘gun-free safe zones,’ which amounts to the same foolishness as a ‘safe space’ on a campus. Just as Bloomberg told Michigan’s graduating seniors that the campus ‘safe space creates the false impression that we can insulate ourselves from those who hold different views,’ a ‘gun-free safe zone’ creates the false impression that being in such a place insulates people from violent criminals or terrorists.
“The notion that creating a ‘gun-free safe zone’ will stop tragedies is a dangerous illusion,” he added. “Disarming honest citizens and leaving them vulnerable to unspeakable violence is not simply dishonest, it is delusional.”
Bloomberg also noted that, “Every generation has had to confront its own demagogues.” Gottlieb said that is exactly why Second Amendment activists stand up to the anti-gun billionaire, who has “used his wealth to force his world view down the throats of law-abiding gun owners.”
“Demagogues think they can bully people out of their rights,” Gottlieb said. “Wealthy elitist demagogues think they can buy those rights through initiative campaigns or by helping elect politicians who legislate against those rights,” a reference to Bloomberg’s multi-million dollar support for Initiative 594, the gun control measure passed in Washington in 2014.
So far as gun sales last month go, according to the NSSF’s weekly “Bullet Points” online newsletter, the NSSF-adjusted National Instant Check System (NICS) figures show more than 1.13 million background checks conducted during the month of April. That’s a 14.4 percent increase over the number of NICS checks conducted in April 2015.
The Free Beacon story noted that April “saw the most gun-related background checks of any April on record, making it the 12th month in a row to achieve a high water mark for gun sales.” The story quoted full NICS data from the FBI, showing a total of more than 2.14 million background checks. That’s a new record for the month, alright, but it’s also the fewest NICS checks for any month so far this year.
In Washington State, as this column reported Monday (see link below), there has also been a continuing surge in the number of concealed pistol licenses. Since January, more than 25,000 new CPLs have been added to the rolls.
“Gun owners and people concerned about personal security have lost trust in the political class to protect their rights.”—Alan Gottlieb
If this surge in gun buying translates to a voting surge by the nation’s gun owners, Clinton may get no closer to the White House next January than the other political elites in whom gun owners have, according to Gottlieb, lost trust. If conservatives and gun owners can set aside their differences and unite behind Donald Trump, who appears to have the Republican nomination sewed up, the country could take a dramatic turn, and Clinton will not be making any court nominations.
One thing worrying gun owners right now is a Supreme Court appointment to fill the vacancy left by the death earlier this year of Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the landmark 2008 Heller ruling. That ruling affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right to keep and bear arms, and since it was handed down in June 2008, SAF and NRA have filed a series of lawsuits challenging various gun laws on constitutional grounds.
It was a SAF lawsuit against the City of Chicago’s handgun ban that led to the 2010 high court ruling in McDonald v. City of Chicago that incorporated the Second Amendment to the states via the 14th Amendment. A separate NRA lawsuit was also part of that effort.
According to this morning’s Seattle Times, if Trump is elected in November, one of the first things he will do is “begin interviewing candidates for the open Supreme Court seat and quickly settle on a nominee in the mold of Justice…Scalia.” President Barack Obama has nominated federal Judge Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s spot, but Garland is hardly “in the mold of” Scalia. SAF and other Second Amendment organizations oppose the nomination.
Though he has not yet been officially nominated, pundits are already saying Trump has six months to bring unity to a fractured landscape of political conservatives and gun owners. For a man who has billed himself as a successful negotiator and deal maker, healing the party and bringing gun owners together may be the hardest undertaking he’s ever attempted.
