All is not lost by Jim Butler

All is Not Lost

Jim Butler, President
Sangamon County Rifle Association
January 2007 GunNews

After a turbulent political year the Democrats took back control of the Congress for the first time in 14 years, and put far left anti-self-defense leaders in positions of power. Although the 2006 election may have been a referendum on a large number of things such as the President, war in Iraq, Jack Abramoff, and Mark Foley to name a few, it wasn't about a groundswell support for more gun control laws. In fact, gun control was noticeably absent from 2006 Congressional candidates websites as they realized openly supporting gun control could cause them to lose the election. These are the ones we need to watch carefully, and to make adjustments to their political careers in two years if necessary.

Unfortunately, unlike these newly elected members, the Democrat Congressional leadership is completely obligated to the far left anti-gun extremists of its party. They are led by the new anti-self-defense House Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi who is a charter member of the most extreme wing of her party. She will be hard pressed to say no to the requests for more gun control by those like Sarah Brady and her congressional allies. This could be bad news for the Democrats in the 2008 Presidential election if these anti-self-defense extremists get their way for more gun control. Loss of their hard won control of Congress could be the result of allowing anti-gun extremists to set the agenda. It appears that many of these people have forgotten the lessons of the 1994 election when they listened to Sarah Brady and her allies. The Democrats paid dearly for that mistake!

Pelosi's strongest House ally in the push for more gun control is the long-time Democrat anti-gun activist John Conyers, the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, packed with a who's-who of Democratic anti-gun movement: Ted Kennedy (MA), Joe Biden (DE), Herb Kohl (WI), Dianne Feinstein (CA), Fuss Feingold (WI), Charles Schumer (NY), and Richard Durbin (IL).

These are the ones that will try to shape anti-self-defense laws for at least the next two years.

We can expect another attempt to pass a highly controversial "Assault Weapon" ban to replace the expired 1994 ban, which caused the Democrats loss of Congress that year.

The 1994 "Assault Weapons" ban was narrowly passed by anti-gunners falsely depicting these semiautomatics as machine guns. Semiautomatic firearms have been used by the general public for over 100 years. They are not machine guns!

As recently as September 2004 when the ban expired we were told that without the 1994 "Assault Weapons" ban the streets of America would run red with blood. It hasn't happened and this so called phony "Assault Weapons" ban wasn't a problem before the 1994 ban or since September 2004 when it expired. It was a cheap political trick by the Clinton administration to make the public believe they were doing something about the high crime rate at the time. Since then states that have allowed their citizens to carry guns for protection of themselves and their families have probably done more to cause crime to drop than any other action.

We have heard cries of gloom and doom by some gun owners since the election. All is not lost however. In the Senate five seats changed hands. Two extreme Republican anti-gunners were ousted, and were replaced by two (possibly less anti-gun) Democrats. Two solid pro-gun Republicans were replaced by proven pro-gun Democrats and one pro-gun Republican lost to an anti-gun Democrat. This means we should still have 53 to 54 reliable Senate votes in the next Congress.

In the House, several of the gun rights movement's most reliable allies fell victim to the Democrats in the November 7, 2006 election. However, many of their replacements have good gun rights records. We had a solid 25-30 vote majority in the old Congress, now we must get by with a somewhat less reliable 11 to 16 vote advantage.

Contacting your U.S. Senators and Representatives is extremely important in the next two years. This is also true for your state legislatures as well.