GOA is fighting against the immigration bill, arguing that all those foreigners will vote to take away our guns. Maybe that’s so, but maybe it’s not so. Italians were big Democratic voters when they first came here too, but GOP politics around here is now full of people of Italian heritage.
I think GOA is attempting to shoe-horn gun rights into other right issues, and I think that is a mistake. It only serves to make the tent smaller. Approximately 35% of Democrats own firearms, and I don’t believe those votes ought to be written off or marginalized. That would pretty much assure that our fortunes rise and fall with the GOP, and given that all political party fortunes rise and fall, that’s not a recipe for long term protection of the right they claim to preserve.
I think Larry Pratt is trying to position himself on other issues in order to make a buck.
The younger generation of voters in this country voice greater support for gun ownership than the older generations, and they do this regardless of the fact that they are more ethnically diverse and contain a larger amount of both legal and illegal immigrants. Because of this I have hope that the next generation of voters will be less hostile to gun rights than the current one.
There’s a big difference between personally not having an issue with guns and actually voting for the people who support gun rights.
But when you break apart those two things, doesn’t it make sense why a gun rights group would oppose amnesty? Have you examined the voting trends of recent Latin American immigrants at all?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the primary motivation of any sort of amnesty is political pandering that will benefit anti-gun democrats, especially those in border states. Those states are overwhelmingly red and represent an impasse for the Obama administration.
Sebastian predicts first they vote Democrat, then (eventually?) Republican. However, even if that is what happens here, optimistically, gun rights are still in the cross hairs or will be rolled back for the foreseeable future in more states with no boost given to pro-gun legislatures at all.
Tell me, then, what is the silver lining for gun owners resulting from any deal that favors amnesty?
I feel like either way Hispanic people will make up a larger portion of the voting public as time goes by, and if at all possible I would like to prevent them from becoming a monolithic voting bloc for the left. I don’t think that means giving 12 million people amnesty but it might mean that some compromise is made which allows them at least some type of legal ability to stay here without full voting rights.
I tend to agree with you. I’m not sure why we have to put them on the path to citizenship, but I’m fine with putting them on the path to a green card.
Amnesty will feed 12 to 20 million new voters into the electorate just in time for the 2020 presidential election. If you look where the illegals are now, this means the currently red states of Texas and Arizona will turn blue, as will the currently purple states of Florida, Virginia, Colorado and Nevada. Recent events should convince any pro-gun citizen that the Democrat party has abandoned any rationality when it comes to gun legislation. We are told again and again that Latin American immigrants are natural conservatives, but the voting patterns of Hispanics indicate that they solidly in the Democrat Party camp. Amnesty will reduce the Republicans to permanent minority status in the future and since they seem to be the only pro-gun party, amnesty also means we can kiss our gun rights goodbye.
if the republican arguments aren’t good enough to reach anyone outside of bible thumpers and OFWG’s, they deserve to be the permanent minority. The sooner the GOP accepts this, the better off they’ll be.
Rand Paul is about the only one who seems to get it….
So the GOP should abandon long standing and faithful faithful constituent groups just to become more attractive to potentially new GOP voters. If gun owners want to prevail and keep something that resembles gun rights in the future than they need to win politically. Immigration reform or amnesty for illegals as it should be called is a loser for the GOP and the Democrats know it. All the talk about compassion and bringing people out from the shadows is pure non-sense. How compassionate is it to legalize 20 million new low wage unskilled workers in a nation with an 8% unemployment rate or to place those newly legal immigrants into direct competition with our permanent Black underclass.
The GOP with its Bible thumpers as you call them is the only game in town as far as politically protecting gun rights right now. And by the way those Bible thumpers as you call them have always been on our side, something to think about before rejecting aligning yourself to the political party that welcomed them. Immigration reform is intended by the Dems to permanently wound and cripple the GOP. Marco Rubio, John McCain and any other Republicans that support this are deluded. These new voters will show up at the polls and vote, as if by order, for Democrats. If you want to see what your future gun rights look like several years after immigration reform then come to New Jersey or Massachusetts or California.
The GOP constituency you’re counting on has lost the last two presidential elections, and with or without immigration reform, demographic changes aren’t going to improve the situation. Same deal in the senate.
The longstanding faithful groups you speak of aren’t going anywhere, but they are getting smaller and will not be enough to accomplish much going forward. Take a look at the long view on this and start reaching out to some other folks before it’s too late. assuming an entire group of people are your enemy will turn out to be a self fulfilling prophecy. with or without immigration reform, Hispanics are going to be 25-30% of the population in ~30 years. I dare you to look at actual data on this. go look up voting trends by ethnicity, then go look at the population trends for those groups projected out over the next few decades. adapt or die.
Count me out of this one. Pratt seems more and more like the kind of fellow who would ruin a perfectly good pillowcase. I won’t run with that crowd.
We’re better off putting our efforts into keeping basic rights protected from popular vote and legislative whim — all votes, not merely the votes of “swarthy furriners.”
and my $$$ will continue to go to the NRA….
disappointing to see everyone debate the issue as if the only thing that matters is the impact it will have on their pet issue politically. If immigration reform is the right thing to do, then support it, even if that has a detrimental impact. This is why those who don’t pay much attention to the GOP default to hating them. When the best argument you can come up with to oppose something is it might keep you from getting your way in the future, and that thing you’re opposing has a huge impact on millions of people…. well you just sound like an ass.
And if you still insist on only viewing this through a pragmatic gun loving lens, then this is still stupid. One way or another the Hispanic vote is growing, so what do you think is going to help you in the long run? Reaching out to them and educating them on why they should support gun rights, or going out of your way to piss them off?
I sort-of understand where you are coming from, but it’s not just a “pragmatic gun-loving lens” that we are looking at this through. It’s the “liberty-loving lens” that concerns me so much; the Democrat Party is out to destroy freedom as we know it, and I’m not at all happy that they are trying to do all they can to cement their power for the future.
Having said that, I have this sneaky suspicion that all these illegals that are hiding under our noses can be our greatest resources: they came here fleeing poor conditions, and we can give them a taste of liberty! But we need to reach out to them, and I don’t know how to do that properly.
I would also add that the Democrat/Statist Machine has been working against us on this. Our own government has ads in Mexico which say “Come to the US for Food Stamps!” Statists are determined to get people here to suck on the tit of Big Government, and those people are going to be more difficult to convert to liberty-and-hard-work folks than the typical illegal.
Gun Owners against Abortion is mixing issues again? Say it ain’t so!
So which one of you guys has a good idea about how assimilation of these folks takes place? If you are coming from a country without a constitution or any notion of constitutional rights (not just 2A rights), how do we acquaint folks with how things are done here?
I would argue most of them already have a better appreciation for how things are done here than the average citizen. The contrast offered between their home country and here offers them a perspective most of us don’t have. They chose to come here because of that.
I’d say ask the Italians, but that would be hard since most of them have assimilated by now. But most of the things people say about Hispanics today they were saying about Italians a century ago.
I live in a neighborhood where minorities are the majority. I’ve taken more than a half-dozen of ’em to the range. And, preached the gospel of freedom, rights and empowerment to ’em all through the process.
Which, they all thoroughly enjoyed. Five of ’em are now gun owners.
The solution is the direct approach. Take responsibility, and make converts of ’em. NRA has five million of us. If we each reach out and convert two or more each, we win.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
One of the big problems you are all missing is the effect of culture. I live in an area with a large population of Hispanics, both legal and illegal. No noticeable difference. Mostly Mexican, but some from all the rest of the countries south of there.
They brought their culture(s) with them, and make little, to no, effort to acculturate themselves or their families. This is very much aided and abetted by the various .gov entities and liberals (but, I repeat myself).
If they are not required to assimilate, and in fact are encouraged not to, by the “multiculturalists”, then you get balkanization as the default result.
As culture goes, so goes everything else. We talk about the attack against our gun culture. Well, this is essentially the same sort of thing, just on a larger scale. So large a scale, that most people can’t see the forest for the tree right in front of them.
An amnesty is simply going to speed up the process that has been ongoing since the 60’s. When the decision was made to allow anyone to come to the US who could find the place, instead of restricting it to those who had the brains and/or money to be a net positive addition, we were put on a declining slope. The (probably deliberate) efforts to impose multiculturalism on the country steepened that slope.
One of the factors causing a worsening of the situation is the high birth rate of this type of “immigrant”, legal or illegal. You can see the same effect in the European countries.
The way things are going now, I envision it like pouring handfuls of sand into a running engine’s oil filler cap. At some point, the filter stops functioning, and the damage accelerates as the sand continues to circulate. Eventually, it will come to a sudden stop, and a complete rebuild will be required to resurrect it. The liberals are not only adding more sand, but draining the oil at the same time. Destruction is pretty much guaranteed. Just a matter of time.
The efforts to turn back the clock could end up looking very similar to the real Balkans of the 90’s, only on a much greater scale. “May you live in interesting times”, indeed.
Assimilation is a funny thing. I could care less if immigrants, legal or illegal, come here and practice their original culture–language, clothing, food, and all. Indeed, their practice of culture is what causes the “melting pot” effect, to the extent that it has always occurred (which is debatable, but still…)
Having said that, there’s only *one* set of cultural beliefs that anyone moving here *needs* to absorb, in order for our way of life to survive: the culture of liberty, self-reliance, hard work, and valuing success.
But it’s not just our immigrants that need to absorb this set of values. *Everyone* does. A natural-born citizen who accepts the culture of government dependence, laziness, and envying the successful is just as poisonous as anyone who moves here with the same values.
Indeed, much has been said about the immigrants who come here and go straight for the welfare benefits–whether they be food stamps, or hospital stays, or schooling, or what-not. What is often overlooked is the damage that’s caused by our own citizens accepting those exact same benefits (including State-sponsored public school).