USA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The critical Nov. 8th 2022 midterm elections are only days away. As people continue talking about a “red wave” sweeping across the U.S. landscape to wash anti-gun Democrats from Congress and state legislatures, the “gun vote” could be the decisive factor in many of these races.
According to Fox News, “The discussion surrounding gun control in the United States is a core issue for some voters heading to the ballot box this November.”
The critical factor is whether gun owners—who often are guilty of lethargy and/or election season apathy—will turn out in adequate numbers to swing the vote. They did last year in Virginia, putting solid pro-gunners in statewide offices, but will they repeat that performance on a national scale?
Take a look at Massachusetts, where the Gun Owner’s Action League just released a report showing how homicides in the Bay State have increased 110 percent since the passage of the 198 Gun Control Act in that state. GOAL Executive Director Jim Wallace, in a telephone conversation with AmmoLand News, said the report speaks for itself:
“The Commonwealth’s decades old gun control scheme has been an unmitigated disaster.”
The law failed to reduce gun-related homicides. It failed to reduce accidental firearms fatalities, and it has done poorly in efforts to reduce gun-related suicides.
Call it the “October non-surprise” since gun control laws have also failed in other regions.
Out in Oregon, Fox News is reporting on Ballot Measure 114, an extremist initiative that would add Oregon to a list of states currently requiring a permit to purchase a firearm. [government permission silps]
According to Fox, “Oregon’s law would be the only one that mandates a live-fire safety class approved by the state police and administered by local law enforcement.”
The proverbial fly in the ointment is that nearly all police agencies do not have the facilities to provide the required training.
The story further notes, “The Oregon State Sheriff’s Association opposes Measure 114, citing the burden it would place on financially-strapped law enforcement agencies. Officials say it would delay law-abiding citizens from being able to purchase guns by months or even longer.”
Kevin Starrett, director of the Oregon Firearms Federation, told Fox News essentially the same thing he told AmmoLand News months ago: “The measure is designed to absolutely guarantee that people will not have the means to protect themselves and to dox anybody who attempts to comply with the permit process.”
In Georgia, it’s gun owners versus an avowed anti-gunner in Stacey Abrams, whom Fox News described as “one of the most significant advocates of gun control in a battleground election against Republican Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp.”
The Fox report also pointed to Ohio, where anti-gun Democratic State Representative Tim Ryan is squaring off against Republican JD Vance.
It is against this backdrop that Friday’s attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—another perennial gun control proponent on Capitol Hill—was so shocking. Pelosi was brutally attacked in his own San Francisco home. He was seriously injured by a suspect who wielded a hammer, demonstrating that blaming guns and penalizing gun owners for violent crimes is a false flag.
Reacting to the attack, Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said the nature of the attack “should preclude any effort by Speaker Pelosi’s Democrat colleagues to exploit this horrible incident for the purpose of advancing their extremist gun control agenda.
“This is the kind of violent crime against which average citizens, including Speaker Pelosi’s constituents, must be prepared to defend themselves on a daily basis in an environment where the far left has pushed ‘defund-the-police’ efforts and adopted policies which have allowed dangerous individuals to roam our streets and neighborhoods,” Gottlieb added.
In Gottlieb’s home state of Washington, there is also an energetic challenge of 30-year-incumbent Democrat Sen. Patty Murray—a dependable anti-gunner—by Republican Tiffany Smiley, a political newcomer who has been waging a remarkably effective campaign. A strong turnout of Evergreen State gun owners could provide a nasty surprise to Murray, who critics say has never represented their interests in Congress.
The only thing that will make the “gun vote” a reality to be reckoned with, not just now but in elections to come, is for gun owners actually to turn out in the millions to cast ballots.
They must understand a couple of things:
- The political party with the majority calls the shots; that is, the majority party sets the legislative agenda, and historically, gun control measures are championed by Democrats.
- Those who oppose Joe Biden’s gun control agenda have only one way to derail it: to take Congress and state legislatures away from his party.
- In cities across the nation, “defund police” schemes have resulted in rising violent crime, and only one party has supported this approach.
In 1994, gun owners outraged by the Clinton semi-auto ban and passage the year before of the Brady Handgun law turned out by the millions and threw out more than 50 anti-gun Democrats, including then-House Speaker Tom Foley. Because of that, gun control was essentially a non-starter for at least a dozen years.
A strong “gun vote” could make that happen again.
RELATED:
Beaver State Battle: Grassroots Gun Owners Fight Extremist OR Ballot Measure
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
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