We Need To Do A Better Job

I was listening to a podcast today, and the host mentioned something that I very much agree with. We, the second amendment rights community need to do a better job. We have allowed our issue (an individuals right to bear arms) to become intertwined with the issues of religious and cultural conservatives. There are plenty of liberals, non-Christians, and homosexuals who own firearms and believe in an individual right to bear arms. However, they are turned off by the way the issue has become synonymous with the anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, fundamentalist Christian issues. It doesn’t matter whether we agree with these other issues or not. If we want to regain the freedoms we have lost in the past 100 years, we need to separate ourselves from them. Though it is seen as a liberal issue now, racial equality was championed by both conservatives and liberals in the 1960s. No less of gun rights hero than Charlton Heston marched for civil rights in the 1960s. I a dare anyone to call him a liberal. We need to convince candidates across the political spectrum that infringing a the right to bear arms is a losing proposition. We need to convince candidates across the political spectrum that having a strong history of supporting the right bear arms will help them win elections. In a few weeks, the two people who are the most against an individuals right to bear arms in the United States Senate are likely to be placed into the White House. It should have been unthinkable for their party to even nominate them. However, what is in some ways worse, the party that has most often been associated with supporting our right to bear arms nominated someone for President who has at best a lukewarm history of supporting our rights. We need to grow beyond our knee jerk reaction of automatically voting for someone with an R after their name on the ballot. We need to become more active in both parties’ primaries to fight against these kind of candidates even getting nominated.