Politico is reporting that anti-gun Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy may end up getting a confirmation vote in the lame duck session. I can believe there’s real pressure for it, given how many articles I’ve seen about Murthy in the media after a long run of silence about the nominee. The article explains that Senators Warner (D-VA) and Tester (D-MT) seem willing to vote for Murthy. I’ll be honest, ever since Jon Tester told everyone in 2008 that Obama wasn’t going to be any problem on guns, I haven’t trusted him on the issue. This is only further evidence that he’s not one to trust. His party certainly can’t be trusted on guns any longer.
Murthy May Get a Vote
Isn’t this still a graded vote?
Jon Tester can’t be trusted on guns or any other issue. Gary Marbut, Montana Shooting Sports Association President, has said Tester is “easily pushed around by liberals.” Truth is, Chuck You Schumer works him like sock puppet.
And yet, gun owners who proudly identify with the Democrat party get their panties in a bunch when gun owners aren’t too friendly to the liberal side of the aisle. Here is an article from TTAG from yesterday:
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/12/robert-farago/housekeeping-ttag-right-wing/
TTAG is not right wing, it’s click bait. Some of the liberal commenters seemed to take offense at the cracks that that website takes at liberal. However, I really can’t see why they don’t get it. In my humble opinion, if you are a firearm owner, and you vote for the Ds, then firearms are not your top priority. You may enjoy them, and you may care about the RKBA, but in my book, if you vote for the party whose platform itself calls for more gun control, then it simply isn’t at the top of your agenda.
The blue dog NRA A-rated coalition seems all but dead. The problem is that I fully recognize that in order to survive, the RKBA has to be supported by both sides of the aisle. I just don’t see a lot of support for the RKBA coming from the Ds in recent times. My personal feeling is that when it comes to the RKBA, the Ds are complete snakes (not that I think the republicans wouldn’t sell down the river if it was politically expedient). Because they invite the progressives into their tent, there will always be a strong contingent in the party that would love nothing more than to do away with the 2nd. They will keep these folks quiet on the RKBA when they run for first terms (see Obama in ’08), but the backstabbing will occur once they get the majorities needed.
We can be thankful that Obama spent all his political capital passing Obamacare. That gave us the revolt of ’10. If Newtown had happened in 2009, we could have been seriously screwed with the majority the Ds enjoyed. Thankfully, they thought Obamacare was a better hill to die on at the time. God bless them for that.
I challenged the Liberal Gun Club a while back over this. I really do think there needs to be groups pushing for gun rights within the Democratic coalition, but at the end of the day if you aren’t willing to ever vote your gun rights, politicians aren’t going to pay attention to you, because why should they?
You do have a point regarding Democratic gun owners. I know plenty of gun owners, hunters, people who carry, etc. that still live in the fantasy land that Democrats are for the “working man” thanks to their years in the unions. It’s a generational thing.
It also doesn’t help that the antis have become very sneaky in the last decade. Gone are the days of calling for outright bans on handguns, semi-autos, standard capacity mags, etc. Now we have striking down preemption, “universal background checks”, and weakening reciprocity agreements. These are the types of subtle grabs that our Democratic gun owning colleagues are usually completely unaware of or just don’t care about.
With that said, I don’t think pro-gun Dem coalitions are completely dead. Maybe on the federal level, but in certain states I’ve lived I’ve seen Ds that are more pro-gun than the Rs that represented me back home in NY. They may not be true believers, but anything we can put up against an anti-gun executive is never a bad thing.