I understand that NRA is trying to attack Biden here, and I fully support that, but I would beware of highlighting articles that have language like this:
Just imagine what the sneering left intelligentsia, in the United States and elsewhere, would have said if a Republican vice-presidential candidate had told CBS News that “when the stockmarket crashed [in 1929], Franklin Roosevelt got on television” and informed Americans what had happened.
Gun rights isn’t a left/right, Democrat Republican issue right? As it turns out, the article linked to had some bits that would have been far better to highlight from a gun standpoint:
The feminist Maureen Dowd has depicted Palin as “the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible”. Professor Wendy Doniger, of the University of Chicago, has gone further, declaring that Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is her pretence that she is a woman”. And the NBC News commentator Andrea Mitchell has been reported as maintaining that “only the uneducated would vote for Mrs Palin”.
NRA needs to be careful not to turn this into a left/right divide. It often is, but that’s not ideally how we want to frame it. It’s one thing to highlight gaffes from candidates who are against us, even if they are gaffes on other issues, but we must take pains not to come off as blatantly partisan when doing so, or diluting the pro-Second Amendment message by mixing them with other issues.
Can you rescind a life membership? Because that’s exactly what I’ll do if the NRA doesn’t come out and endorse McCain.
George H.W. Bush did it.
You’re right. He did.
Though most 2A supports might be “on the right†there are a lot “on the left†including PGP and many Democrats in Congress. The NRA should stick to guns, hunting, etc and that’s it. No talk of immigration, taxes, etc unless they are directly related to guns.
Though they did highlight faith in one of their anti-Obama ads, but that was because of the bitter comment.
I’ve heard talk of some leftists who legally own and shoot their guns, but only in the northwestern states like Montana. In Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley, guns and our gun rights seem to always be shunned and despised by the left-wingers as far as I can tell.
Another pro-gun Lefty here, from Texas–yes, we do exist.
While I won’t be voting for McCain/Palin,
I’m exasperated by the Democratic presidential ticket this year and I won’t be voting for them, either. I’m either sitting this one out or voting 3rd party.
Not just because of the gun issue, though that is a factor, but because even on the Lefty issues near and dear to me, Obama is a total phony.
I recently read Don Kates’ classic 1970s book _Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out_, which David Hardy also contributed to as well. It’s still relevant 30 years later. I’m also going back and re-reading ARMED by Kates and Kleck.
I think “Gun control” is favored by what I like to call “Latte Liberals”, who are superficially Leftish, etc, but also very well heeled, and the muddle-headed New Agey crowd, also only nominally Left. People who really haven’t thought things through, and/or live lives of relative privilege and suburban/urban comfort such that they truly don’t understand the importance of the 2nd Amendment and RKBA that most Americans recognize. I’m privately not that crazy about such faux-Left folk myself. Obama may appeal to them (i.e. someone just as superficial as they are), but not to me.
I agree. I know quite a few liberals who are either supportive of the 2A or not hostile towards it who are wary at best and hostile at worst towards the NRA because they view it as little more than an extension of the GOP, not without some small amount of justification.
Of course, some of that can’t be helped, because if Republicans are generally supportive of the 2A and the Democrats are not, then obviously the NRA would be forced to lean more towards the GOP—that’s to be expected—but perhaps they are not vocal enough in supporting pro-2A Democrats, and they should definitely stay out of other issues.