It looks like Democrats are looking to candidates from deep red districts to not give in on guns and to openly push their national gun ban agenda.
I received my home town paper today, and this is a full-page ad running in small town papers in Oklahoma from Fred Gipson who is running as a Democrat in Oklahoma’s 4th district which does have a college town, but is also largely rural.
click to enlarge
I wish I was back in town the day the candidate visited so I could introduce myself as a “female AR-15 owner, NRA Life Member, volunteer to fund programs that teach young people how to safely and responsibly use semi-automatic rifles & other firearms, and past Democratic pro-gun candidate volunteer.” All with a smile. Because even our insults back home are polite.
I think it’s safe to say that given the branding of his website and lack of events posted that he probably doesn’t stand a chance in a district where his incumbent opponent has consistently won with around 70% of the vote. But I don’t think it bodes well for us that one of the major political parties is running openly on gun bans even in pro-gun areas. It seems they don’t believe we’ll be around long enough to matter.
If you live in OK-4, it might be wise to let your local Democratic Party know that you expect them to find candidates who have a record of respecting the 2nd Amendment instead of running candidates who campaign on banning guns many local residents own and use responsibly. Telling the local leaders who have a voice at the state level that they are hurting down ticket races by pushing gun control candidates on the ballot can make a difference in how the political parties work with us instead of against us.
I don’t live in that district. But I have a lot of gun owning friends in that district. I will spread the word. It’s not good that he just loses. We have to make it known that he lost in part on his stance on guns.
That’s great! Yes, letting people know that they can and should make their voices heard to local officials and party leaders is very helpful. Most people don’t realize that feedback really does get back to folks who can influence candidates.
Any state level candidate who runs alongside or climbs aboard this train wreck should also be challenged. Got an A grade from NRA in the state house? Don’t put your name on a sign with this guy. Don’t do phone banks where his candidacy is mentioned alongside your name.
One of the fastest ways that I’ve helped influence a more positive candidate was as a lowly phone bank volunteer. I was handed a call sheet that included a low level candidate who wasn’t good on guns. I requested a new district to call into and explained that I was there for gun rights. I supported some people on the call list, but I’d rather campaign for them in districts with other pro-gun candidates rather than alongside a district with an anti-gun candidate just because she was in the same party. They were floored. It stood out, and word got back to the candidate who, though she won, turned out to really improve on Second Amendment issues.
Central Committee has a Five Year Plan to Eliminate Gun Owners
And I couldn’t help but pile on by pointing out fundamental problems in his campaign finance plans on Twitter that he doesn’t address in this ad or on his website where he has unlimited pixels.
2 tweets… 24 followers. You are upset about this guy, why?
I’m not upset, but rather stunned that the Dem candidates are openly running on gun bans in what could be Blue Dog territory. It shows that they have decided to kiss that strategy goodbye and embrace the far left agenda on this issue that used to win them votes.
Oklahoma is a state where Dems can win if they are pro-gun and not too radical. But this push by the national party to go farther left is why many have given up there. Now it seems they have managed to find candidates willing to jump on board. Hopefully they keep losing, but it doesn’t help us if they win in marginal seats in other areas.
The Democrat party is certainly no stranger to overreach in much broader areas such as candidate choice. They went all in for Hillary, for instance, even in the heartland. Why would that strategy change now? Remember, she was positioned as the “acceptable” candidate for blue dogs. There are a few who get it for the most part, like Conor Lamb. Or Jon Tester. Whether they are allowed to play the fool or are genuinely interested in discourse and not the nanny state gun ban agenda, who knows? But I have yet to see anything new.
This guy looks like a bit like a crank masquerading as the clean independent. We have them in the “deep red” parts of PA, too.
I’m guessing that “A” rating will be removed pretty quickly.
I don’t think its bad for us that they are doing this. I think its actually great for us. Get them out in the open. While they may think its good for them, they are wrong. And will find out quickly.
He doesn’t have an A rating. That’s his comparison with his opponent. His formatting for this ad does leave something to be desired.
OOOOHHHH.
Yeah that’s a terrible formatting.
$770,000 doesn’t leave much for a great graphic designer. :)
Old white people – still the core constituency of the gun control nannies in 2018.
Also, this appears to be one of their latest tactics. Trot out HARD (well, if he can stand without a cane) ex-military types who can speak to “WEAPONS OF WAR!!!” advocating confiscation. Tell me how that works out… The lack of military participation and its effect on the body politic cuts both ways.
Alternative explanation for assault on gun rights. Turn out the blue wave nationally. They know their only chance is to get the national elections to turn on turnout/GOTV efforts. They don’t care about any given district. They are trying to get enough house congress critters to further screw with Trump. They know they can’t get the Senate and only hope to prevent it going 60-40, and you do that with statewide voting turnout. So combine the two efforts, and this is “all about da base”.
I like your explanation a lot.
Oklahoma doesn’t have any US Senate elections in 2018.
Even though you didn’t mention statewide races that have nothing to do with Trump, there is a gubernatorial race this year. However, I’m seeing old links that indicate a major Democratic candidate was actually endorsed by NRA in previous elections. (He hasn’t done anything that I know of to be bumped down in his grade, and no grades have been released for Oklahoma yet this year.)
I don’t think this guy’s position fits that strategy for turnout at the federal level.
That seems like a good idea in theory, but it’s not at all hard to see how it could backfire drastically.
I *really* wish more Democrats were trying to take the House by supporting gun rights, or at least ignoring them, rather than by trying to destroy gun rights. Doing so would go a long way to strengthening gun rights in general. Instead, we have to put up with Republicans being milquetoast on the issue because they know we know that the alternative is far worse.
I also wish Republicans would just pass National Reciprocity just to show that they are strong on gun rights, and really mean it. It would go far to helping them in November.
National Reciprocity will not pass this Senate – I did a breakdown in a post a couple months back (shortly before the Roy Moore special election, and I wrongly assumed he’d win).
Which means the Republicans OUGHT to hold the vote to get people on record without consequences.
if/when the governor signs SB1212 making OK the latest “no permit required” state…what’s his game plan?
I just checked and saw that one of my high school classmates voted for it.
And Gun Ban Gipson wants to represent this same area? Ha!
A good half of those points could be read as favorable to his opponent, too.
(Especially mentioning that his opponent is A Rated by the NRA. That was just foolish.)
“But I don’t think it bodes well for us that one of the major political parties is running openly on gun bans even in pro-gun areas.”
Perhaps, but the Democrats also have a tendency to be clueless about “flyover country.” If these campaigns are being organized centrally by people who have no idea about what is going on in these districts, they would make what is essentially a stupid mistake like this.
yep. I’d be more worried about a squishy compromiser Democrat strategy. Death by a thousand cuts. Normal people see this sort of stuff and it turns them off. It cements the Democrats as a party geographically isolated to the urban areas.
Or he’s doing this for teh lulz – by running hard on gun control, he gets a shot at the Big Bloomberg Bux and he reminds people he exists.
I can’t help but wonder if this Democratic Party anti-gun strategy is going to backfire horribly on them in the 2018 election. I’ve heard at least one Blue Dog Democrat complain that gun-control hurts the Party in purple areas.
I remember in the early months of 2016 wondering if the overt anti-gun campaigning of the Democrats was foolish. I observed a distinct overlap between the ‘battleground states’ of the electoral college, and those states with fairly pro-gun state level laws. And golly, Trump did end up winning those battleground states by narrow margins. Did gun politics make the difference?
On the other hand, if the Democrats do ride a ‘blue wave’ into office (I will be more interested to see what if any State level offices are part of a blue wave), the anti-gunners will claim a popular mandate. Of course the anti-gunners have been claiming for more than five years already that the U.S. is at a “tipping point!” in favor of gun-control. I see lots of wishful thinking on their part.
Interesting times we live in.
They’ve been making that “Tipping Point” claim since after the 2006 Midterms.
This strategy is smarter tham people think. Normally a Dem in this district has 00.00000% chance. But if there is a blue wave, or even the Dem loses by less than protected ( less than 70% share), they can claim “momentum” for gun control. Neither has anything to with the agenda, but it can be spun that way.
Holy Crap! Have you folks seen this yet? The Democrats are getting very overt on their gun-ban agenda.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/05/03/ban-assault-weapons-buy-them-back-prosecute-offenders-column/570590002/
Ban assault weapons, buy them back, [prosecute] resisters: [says] Ex-prosecutor in Congress
…America has a deadly problem, a problem other developed nations have avoided or addressed. Some say we’re already too far gone to take corrective action, but we cannot have a defeatist attitude about this. Fixing our problem requires boldness and will be costly, but the cost of letting it fester will be far higher — for our wallets, and for our souls.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California’s San Francisco Bay area, is co-chair of the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, and serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
The Democrats will never see their authoritarian fantasy pass at the Federal level. But what about within Commiefornia?
Gavin Newsom, a hyper demagogic man with garbage personal ethics (when he was Mayor of San Francisco, he had an affair with a subordinate, who also happened to be the wife of his campaign manager), is about to be elected Governor of California. And he is one of the leaders pushing harsher gun-control measures. And California already has super majorities of Democrats in control of the California Legislature.
God help the poor gun-owners of California!
And remember, Gavin Newsom signed a total gun ban in 2005 as mayor of SF. Banned them all- with confiscation of registered handguns.
Did you happen to read the 490 comments? For every gun banner getting his jollies writing a fictional article like that, there are hundreds/thousands others who may or may not own a gun who get what the real agenda is.
It would seem no one in American politics comprehends patience or postponed gratification.
Just like the Republicans thought the fast track to their vision of Valhalla was to elect not just a crypto-fascist, but a real one – and thus may have shot themselves in the head, rather than just the foot – the Democrats seem to believe that in their good fortune, they can have everything they want in the Blue Wave they are anticipating. That is probably good news for gun owners.
Clearly if the Democrats could keep gun control in their pants until after the November election, they could have everything they want. I frankly find it hard to believe that allegedly skilled professional political strategists can’t see that. But, they can’t wait. (I am of course speaking solely in tactical terms, not in terms of what I want to see happen.)
I’m thinking of how in WWII the United States delayed a cross-channel invasion of Europe until it was as close to being an assured success as they were likely to get; that despite the impatience of its allies for the opening of a western front. Had either of our political parties in their contemporary forms been in charge, the invasion probably would have been attempted in 1942, and the war might still be going on.
There is most definitely a positive correlation between political acts of desperation and gun control in this country. Trump is nearing 50%, news comes that Dems have been consistently losing the millennial vote over the last two years, and the generic ballot for 2018 congressional electiona separates the two parties by 5 points or less even with the laziest GOP ever.
Lazy is generous.
You have your WWII history somewhat mixed up. It was the UK and not the US who was holding back on invading France. The US was eager for an earlier invasion.
And if the US/UK had invaded France earlier, would that have been better or worse than how the war actually played out? That is highly debatable.
The Germans didn’t even occupy Southern France until after the US invaded North Africa in 1942. And by the time of Operation Torch, the Germans were at their deepest penetration into the USSR at Stalingrad.
Thanks. It was only an analogy for, tacticians thinking they see a quick path to victory, and overstepping themselves without thinking their way through. The “what ifs” you offer are good examples of the kinds of things that need thought-through. The invasion of North Africa was a success, but, possibly it resulted in other, unanticipated things happening.
All that said: As I recall Stalin attempted to pressure both Churchill and FDR for the invasion; so up to some point, both countries were being hurried along, faster than they wished to go, and probably it’s a good thing that bilaterally, they held out.
I see Mr. Gipson is part of the Democrat youth movement exemplified by Hillary, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Nancy Pelosi.
These are the same people that told us in the 1960’s to “Never Trust Anyone Over 30.”
I wonder if the next Democrat slogan will be, “The Future is Bright Gray!”
The Democrats have always been for totalitarian policies and that means gun bans So they lie about their aims Now they are open. Let the party destroy itself These idiot progressives will not learn. It is their faith that is wrong.