Editor’s Note: The following article contains the opinion and analysis of David Codrea. It is published as commentary and does not necessarily reflect the official views of AmmoLand News.
“Ignorance, Not Immigration, Is the Real Threat to the Second Amendment: Rebutting David Codrea’s Article,” Bearing Arms posted on X Wednesday with a link to the opinion piece by author, certified firearms instructor, and Second Amendment advocate Rajit Singh. My March 10 AmmoLand article, “Gun Groups Failing Members by Ignoring Immigration Threat,” has ruffled some feathers in the “gun influencer” community.
“But you didn’t rebut me. You ignored or glossed over the points I made and focused on your own that avoid them,” I replied to Singh. “This has everything you need to truly rebut me — if you can,” I added, including a screenshot of my challenge, that has gone unanswered by those who disagree with my argument, since I first posted it almost nine years ago:
Audit all credible polls against real world experience in places like California and then produce credible data – not opinion, not anecdotes, not isolated examples, but something that can be independently validated – demonstrating that “amnesty” and a “pathway to citizenship” for MILLIONS of foreign nationals in this country illegally (and legally, with CURRENT culturally suicidal policies) WILL NOT overwhelmingly favor Democrats and anti-gunners.
Show your sources and methodologies for determining this WILL NOT result in supermajorities in state and federal legislatures that will then be able to pass all kinds of anti-gun edicts. Show how this WILL NOT result in nominations and confirmations of judges to the Supreme and federal courts who will uphold those edicts and reverse gains made to date.
My contention is that the issue presents a significant threat to government recognition of the right to keep and bear arms and that gun rights groups leading the fight to protect, restore, and advance that right are failing their members by ignoring it. And my recommendation from the March 10 article is to ask those groups:
“What are you going to do to counter the existential threat both legal and illegal immigration pose to the Second Amendment, and what reforms will you expect politicians you support to champion?”
If my contentions were untrue, rebutting them would be easy. Let’s stay focused and try.
In a 2017 article, I cited reports from 2013-2015 showing demographic changes shifting the electorate to the left and cited seven leading polls showing overwhelming numbers of immigrants “think controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting gun ownership rights.” And a subsequent Pew Research Center survey (2022) shows the numbers not improving (“More than seven-in-ten Latinos (73%) say it is more important to control gun ownership than to protect the right of Americans to own guns, greater than the 52% of U.S. adults overall who say the same”).
All the critics need to do to prove this wrong is to come up with numbers that credibly refute those given. They can’t because there are none. And they may not believe this, but I wish they could.
That Democrats, the party that puts its citizen disarmament agenda right in its platform (Chapter 5), favor a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens is self-evident and longstanding. In 2014, Jeh Johnson, Barack Obama’s Homeland Security, told the United States Conference of Mayors that “the approximately 11 million people who are in the country illegally have ‘earned the right to be citizens.’” In 2018, Hillary Clinton proclaimed, “I have always been and remain a staunch advocate of comprehensive immigration reform that’s true to our values and treats every person with dignity, provides a pathway to full and equal citizenship.” And in 2022, Sen. Chuck Schumer declared, “The only way we’re going to have a great future in America is if we … get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented, there are here.” (“However many” makes it more like anywhere from 22 to 30 million, a number that would absolutely change the balance of elections to favor wealth redistributionist Democrats.)
Then there’s legal immigration, which under current law encourages chain migration, “birthright citizenship,” and welfare benefits (“Nearly half of households headed by immigrants, those legally and illegally living in the United States, are on one or more forms of welfare, a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of Census Bureau data reveals”), and further, no assured way to comprehensively vet refugees and Third World immigrants coming from countries where records are unreliable or nonexistent. The government (with its prime directives articulated in the preamble to the Constitution concluding with “to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”) makes laws that admit foreign nationals who do not support those objectives, and that is incompatible with the text, history, and tradition of Founding principles.
There’s an important criterion in my challenge, and that is that any meaningful refutation must provide credible data – not opinion, not anecdotes, not isolated examples. That’s because, and as I made clear in the piece that’s prompted pushback not just from Singh, but from others I’ll address later in this response, there are undeniably some great new Americans with a hard-won understanding of freedom that puts No Kings rally agitators and Moms Demand Action harridans to shame.
An activist who got me started in NRA activism in Los Angeles is an African-born Italian. A frequent contributor to The War on Guns is of Indian heritage. A Cuban refugee/immigrant is a mentor whose important research I rely on and whose writings I regularly publicize. And I publicly mourned the untimely death of another Cuban colleague and filmmaker whose life’s work exposed the evils of communism.
Remember: What I’ve been calling for are meaningful reforms that, to paraphrase Democrat President (and originalist Second Amendment supporter!) John F. Kennedy, ask what admitted foreign nationals can do for our country, not what it can do to enrich them and benefit pathway to citizenship Democrats and cheap labor Republicans who abet them.
Singh’s Non-Responsive Rebuttal Ignores My Challenge
He can’t say he didn’t know, because I sent it to him before he wrote his piece, with the question, “ How about you take the challenge first? It provides every opportunity to debunk my claims without changing the subject.” After all, he can’t refute my contentions unless he first addresses and then deconstructs them to show how they are wrong.
So, let’s see what he did address.
“Ideas and attitudes aren’t tied to genetics, and culture is a moving target,” Singh begins, making his points while ignoring mine. “Assimilation is a process that takes a generation or two at the most, as seen by previous waves of immigration to the United States.”
That refutes nothing I said. But it does refute the data cited above, that shows even after decades, sentiment still remains strongly anti-gun in landslide proportions. Besides, the midterms are coming up, and after that the next presidential election that will determine the composition of the Supreme Court with an ability to overturn Heller, McDonald, and Bruen, and uphold all those infringements coming out of Democrat strongholds with a vengeance.
Simply put, we don’t have “a generation or two.” Not if we want to resolve things peaceably.
“Secondly, culture can change without immigration,” Singh asserts, citing Vermont. Of course, it can, and nowhere have I ever said differently. My argument is that adding a foreign population of 70% anti-gun new voters on top of that will seal the deal.
“Gun control’s history debunks the ‘immigration threat’ to the Second Amendment,” Singh continues. “The worst gun control that we suffer to this day was passed by an overwhelmingly white, native-born electorate with immigrants having little say in it. Even within a person’s lifetime, political ideas, attitudes, and voting preferences change.”
Offering opinions and anecdotes without actual data to back them up, purposefully ignores my challenge and does nothing to refute my documented observations.
As one of the (few) responsive comments on X observed, “The question is not whether immigrants are the only or the most typical cause of gun control, but whether they do generally further it. Just because a population is a minority doesn’t mean that it can’t have large political impact if sufficiently motivated and united (e.g. gay marriage). No data is presented to support the proposition that immigrants’ views on gun control actually can/do change.”
Singh further ignores my challenge comparing declining birthrates (significantly not defining those terms and not looking at numbers) between “progressives” and “conservatives” in the “developed world,” and that’s a manipulated qualification the gun-grabbers use, concluding “the act of having kids makes people conservative.” Without further detailed elaboration, the charts he presents are meaningless.
“Conservative,” of course, is a relative term based on culture and time. A “conservative” in 1776 would have been a Tory. A conservative foreign national will embrace the cultural values they bring with them and teach those to their children. Segregating themselves into communities like Dearborn, or Minneapolis, or East Los Angeles is hardly conducive to the type of “conservatism” Singh makes witty repartees about, or if it does, he needs to show some numbers.
What he also ignores are studies showing that in spite of overall declines, “The relatively high fertility of immigrant women means that they continue to account for a disproportionate share of U.S. births. While 14% of the U.S. population in 2017 was foreign born, 23% of all births were to immigrant women.” Then factor in, “Nearly half of households headed by immigrants, those legally and illegally living in the United States, are on one or more forms of welfare, a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) analysis of Census Bureau data reveals.”
That means a vote for Democrats is a vote for self-interest. And yes, of course, plenty of native-born citizens are being subsidized, no argument. But adding in millions more only makes things worse, especially once they get the vote. Change my mind.
“Knowledge changes minds,” Singh asserts. “I co-authored a book titled, ‘Each One, Teach One: Preserving and protecting the Second Amendment in the 21st century and beyond,’ talking about just this, about how if everyone introduces a non-gun owner to guns, the gun control debate would be won overnight.”
Many of us have written about taking new people to the range, for years, and yes, it can be fun and rewarding. It’s also expensive and time consuming, and we’ve got tens of millions of pathway to citizenship immigrants to get through, and tens of millions more Democrats, many of whom are hostile and view MAGA voters as fascists, racists and worse. How much money and effort is going to be needed, who is going to organize it, how do you motivate gun owners who can’t even be troubled to show up at a political event, kick in a buck, share a link, or God forbid, vote, and where can you show doing this has even made a dent in percentages? I see the book’s been out for 10 years now and have a question: How many election cycles ‘til we start seeing benefits, and what are things going to look like by then? And you still haven’t addressed any of my points.
Interestingly, Singh’s co-author is Greg Camp, a self-described “Liberal, progressive” who, also without addressing my challenge calls “our current war on illegal immigration … misguided policy,” says stuff on X like “You Nazis spent decades whining about federalism, only to throw it out once you got a crazy enough Führer in office” and “I don’t want Republicans in the White House.”
You tell me what the alternative would have meant. And why he doesn’t include his co-author Singh in his indictment.
“Antagonism changes minds too, in a bad way,” Singh then asserts. “Elections are won by coalition-building around policy, not identity… [A]dopting the failed ideas of the Woke Left in fear of the Woke Left getting into power will be a self-fulfilling prophecy that puts the Woke Left right back into power.”
Kind of like calling Republicans “Nazis?” Besides, what reasonable person could possibly be antagonized from being presented with truthful observations that rely on statistics and real world observations, presented with no other value judgments on personal worth? And how telling is it that while Singh won’t address any of my contentions, he’s happy to mischaracterize them.
“Second Amendment groups are doing the right thing by focusing on a single issue,” Singh then claims. “That’s good. Scope creep is bad for nonprofits, especially those built around a single-issue focus and powered by voluntary donations (including from immigrants).”
Got numbers on that last claim, and how they compare with the damage done by “naturalized” citizens”? As long as Singh is free to resort to opinions and anecdotes, I’m going to do the same, albeit with one that’s better documented than anything I’ve seen him present so far.
“Unlike three decades ago, the residents are often from other places, like India and Korea. And when they vote, it is often for Democrats,” The New York Times reported back in 2019 (“How Voters Turned Virginia From Deep Red to Solid Blue”):
“Guns, that is the most pressing issue for me,” said Vijay Katkuri, 38, a software engineer from southern India, explaining why he voted for a Democratic challenger in Tuesday’s elections. He was shopping for chicken at the Indian Spice Food Market. “There are lots of other issues, but you can only fix them if you are alive.”
Did I mention that per a 2023 India Currents report, “83% Of Indian Americans Say We Need Stricter Gun Laws”? Who wants to wait another generation to see how many are now with us? How’s that for “single issue”?
Besides, that’s not all NRA needs to concern itself with – that is if it’s to follow its own Bylaws.
“To protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially with reference to the inalienable right of the individual American citizen guaranteed by such Constitution to acquire, possess, collect, exhibit, transport, carry, transfer ownership of, and enjoy the right to use arms… [and] To promote public safety, law and order, and the national defense…”
The mandate is to protect and defend the whole Constitution. As for that “single issue,” it says “especially,” not “exclusively.” And public safety, law and order, and national defense are all threatened by deliberate and continuous flouting of immigration laws by foreign nationals, as has been proven ad nauseam, legislative and judicial recognition of the right to keep and bear arms. Tying NRA’s hands and saying it can’t involve itself on issues that impact the Second Amendment means that, to be logically consistent, the Association should have never involved itself in its McCain – Feingold “campaign finance reform” opposition, where it specifically told members the legislation was “a direct killing attack on every individual American’s First Amendment right to use political speech to protect the entire Bill of Rights.”
“Second Amendment groups aren’t doing enough to woo immigrants and new Americans,” Singh then argues. “There was zero outreach from any of them at any point before, during, or after my immigration and naturalization process.”
Did he just back-handedly admit he realizes there’s a threat to not doing so? He must have, “With the immigrant population at an estimated 16%.”
Sure, as I’ve said before to another critic who demanded more evidence without offering any of his own. “Go for a foreign language outreach program if you like. Good idea.” Let us know when that happens, but by the time you get it off the ground, assuming you ever do, there will be millions more new ‘citizens.’ Plus, you’ve given absolutely no estimates on how many ‘converts’ that will bring in, and if it will be more than a few drops against an overwhelmingly anti-gun tidal wave.
What medium will you use to get the message out, and how will it compare in influence with existing anti-gun television networks and newspapers, including foreign language ones that are main sources, like Univision, where the prevalent opinion being spread is “Progress on immigration requires progress on guns”? What kind of organization is needed to reach outside of the limited “pro-gun” echo chamber we’re arguing in, how many personnel will that require, and where’s the money coming from to fund it to where its competitive with globale media conglomerates, especially with the untold millions on that “pathway to citizenship”?
Oh, but you “have contempt for illegal immigration,” Mr. Singh? It doesn’t matter what you want. It’s what Chuck Schumer and the Democrats want and they’re open about it, and I see no meaningful effort on the part of the “pro-gun community” to even acknowledge it’s an issue, let alone come up with an organized, coordinated, and realistic plan to counter that. As long as prominent influencers like you put down attempts to get gun owners discussing it, the gun groups will have all the cover they need to continue their deliberate indifference. Heck, more threats even = more donations. And how does your co-author feel about your contempt—has he publicly condemned you as a fascist yet, and if not, why not?
“Gun rights advocates should be rallying around firearms education and evangelism, not fanning the flames of a new panic,” you conclude. “I’m not serving you platitudes; I practice what I preach. Last year, I taught 33 students how to shoot.”
First, it’s not a “new panic.” Some of us have been thoughtfully raising this flag for years, it’s just the big dogs bark louder. And yes, all you’ve served throughout have been platitudes, otherwise you would not have ducked my challenge. And just because someone has a gun doesn’t mean they won’t continue to undermine the right by voting for Democrats. Diversity is no guarantee, and it’s not out of line to ask how your 33 students voted, because if having a gun was all it took, we’d have no better pals than Fudds for Biden and Redneck Revolt.
You do have a point though. Ignorance through avoidance, deliberate indifference, and outright hostility by “gun rights leaders” is a major threat that makes the gun prohibitionists very happy.
Another country heard from
Singh wasn’t the only “gun rights influencer” put off by my piece. Stephen Gutowski of The Reload was positively, self-righteously, sanctimoniously incensed to the point of coming unglued.
“This is an article that outright claims immigrants are inherently bad, which is both bigoted and wildly unpopular. Some real loser sh__. Following its advice would be morally wrong and politically disastrous for gun groups,” he angrily accused, naturally not focusing on a word I’d said, or coming up with one bit of evidence to actually refute its validity.
“David, your position is based on nothing but bigotry,” Gutowski charged. “Your argument, which you provide no actual evidence for, is that all immigrants think the same (wrong) way and are unpersuadable. Do you or do you not think immigrants are inferior to you because of this?”
He also accuses me of repeating the Great Replacement Theory from the Charlston “Unite the Right Rally,” which I never did and again shows he’s not responding to what I said but what he says I said. My only rejoinder is don’t tell me, tell The Guardian, a leaning left paper from the UK running headlines in 2000 declaring “The last days of a white world,” and “Non-whites will be the majority in US and Europe by 2050.”
Then refute The Red-Green Axis and it’s expose on what well-funded NGOs are doing to reshape the culture away from the Founders’ Republic. I’ve read it. Have you, Mr. Gutowski?
“You clearly believe the anti-gun position is not just wrong but also immoral,” Gutowski added. Finally, he got something right! Damn straight it is.
The contortions people twist themselves into to indulge their confirmation biases… he’s not using my words, he’s using his inferences to conclude things about cold facts that I never claimed and channeling his inner Antifa telling me to prove to his satisfaction that I’m not a supremacist.
I’m not going to dignify “gotcha” insults with “some of my best friends are”-type protests, especially for someone who fights like a leftist. My online record goes back over 30 years, when a website I co-founded posted the first 2A Inclusion Statement that I’m aware of (although looking back today I’d strike “political party”). But I will go this far: I am an ideologist and a culturist. I believe the Bill of Rights culture, derived from Western culture, is superior at advancing freedom, knowledge, technology, prosperity, and human happiness than any other developed on the planet to date. Care to take that on, Mr. G?
Gutowski wasn’t the last. Kostas Moros, Director of Legal Research and Education at the Second Amendment Foundation, weighed in, again never addressing any of the points I’d made, and ignoring the qualifier about anecdotes not counting by letting his followers know “My parents are Greek immigrants… Yet it took one generation for their kid to be a 2A attorney.”
As we’ve seen, the same doesn’t hold true for other groups, and if we have to wait a generation, what will the government and the laws look like? Note I’m not asking for opinion. Come up with numbers to substantiate that in a generation we’ll all be eatin’ that rainbow stew, because like the UFO poster says, I want to believe.
As for his assertion that “according to a Harvard study, 46% of self-identified Latinos voted for Trump in 2024,” a link would be helpful, 54% against is still a landslide, there’s some problematic trending going on, and “Between 1980 and 2025 the foreign-born population nearly doubled from 15.1% to 28.2%. (It was 9% in 1970). 52% of the population of CA are immigrants or their children. Americans are a minority in California.”
Still, his position doesn’t surprise me. It agrees with the boss’s.
And my position is not defeatism, Mr. Moros. I offer a plan that requires leadership that you refuse to provide (see my questions for the gun groups). Defeatism is doing nothing and tearing doable actions down to everyone within your sphere of influence while offering nothing more than anecdotes and platitudes.
Finally, in terms of RKBA luminaries coming out against my thesis is Hannah Hill of NFGR, who touts her immigrant ancestors from assimilable Western cultures (who presumably arrived before the big handouts were an attractant), and never once gives any indication that she has even looked at my claims, as opposed to just riffing off what Moros has asserted. That’s disappointing, because I expected more of a hard line and open mind from what was once a maverick group that has had its share of putdowns from the bigger gun groups when it rocked the boat. It is curious, though, how that last link is now only reachable through the Internet Archive.
I’d be remiss not to include some of the comments left by followers influenced by the naysayers, again, not a one of them addressing my points but going wholly from posts criticizing me:
“F___ mission creep… Holy s___ shut the f___ up. These issues are completely seperate… If any gun groups I donate to gives a cent towards immigration policy I’ll never give them my money again. That’s not what I donate to them for and that’s not what I want the money used for… If this is true, why wouldn’t you try reaching out to these groups to inform them of the benefits of their new citizenship and help them adopt our way of life as pertains to firearms? Why don’t we greet these people and tell them about their rights?… ridiculous statist garbage. the pro-2A position is free guns handed out to illegal migrants as they hop the fence… This has nothing to do with guns. Shut up and stay in your lane… F___. Off… No they aren’t, shut up.”
Well argued! But not as well as this:
“So what is your solution David? Stop immigration from India? Then what will you do with Indians already here? Send us to reeducation camps?”
Everybody here old enough to remember Diff’rent Strokes…?
In the wake of such reasoned discourse, I’m ending this on the same note I began my first article with, sharing an immigration warning by Constitutional attorney Mark W. Smith of Four Boxes Diner, this time with a quote from his Monday video “Dystopian Virginia Gun Control Backfires Massively!” (begin @7:40):
[W]e really need, for a whole bunch of reasons … to continue to push that most important issue, which is the most important issue when it comes to our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and that is the immigration issue, kicking out the people [who] shouldn’t be here, kicking out the people that may be illegally voting, kicking out the people that have no interest in the right to keep and bear arms.
I’ve had my say. I invite any person I’ve named who feels they’ve been treated unfairly to leave a comment below, or better yet, write your own rebuttal. Comment posters, you’re of course free to tell me I’m full of it, but if you do, we’ll see if you’re intellectually honest enough to address what I claim in my challenge and show with superior data, not opinion, where I’m wrong. You’ll be able to tell which ones didn’t read this through if their objections have already been covered.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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