It’s that time of year again. According to some, the holidays are nothing if not a prime opportunity to exploit seasonal get-togethers to dish up some hot political controversy along with the roast and eggnog.
Just as anti-gun advocates are happily misconstruing the Supreme Court’s recent decision not to hear a case challenging a local ban on popular semi-automatic firearms as pointing to a way forward for gun control, available evidence shows that the American people reject such measures in record numbers.
A recent article in the Wall St. Journal theorizes that Hillary Clinton may suffer the same fate in her quest for the White House in 2016 that Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey did in his race against then-former-Vice-President Richard M. Nixon in 1968. Noting that Nixon defeated Humphrey by, in part, promising to get tougher on crime, Daniel Henninger writes, “The pieces are now falling into place for another law-and-order presidential campaign.”
Before a similar quote was attributed to Rahm Emanuel, former-United Kingdom Prime Minister Winston Churchill supposedly stated, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” While the quote is of questionable veracity, current-UK PM David Cameron seems to embrace the sentiment. Following November’s heinous terrorist attacks in Paris, the Tory leader no longer appears content to merely subjugate the proles of Airstrip One, and has, in the run up to a European Council meeting held Friday December 18, demanded that the rest of Europe enact severe gun controls. While most of the EU is not a paragon of gun rights, at the moment some of its countries are considerably more respectful of those rights than the UK.
You know that a reporter supports gun control when he or she says that government officials who don’t stamp their feet for gun control lack “courage.” It’s not just because some reporters flatter themselves by thinking that they occupy the moral and intellectual high ground on every issue under the sun. It’s also because ever since the Senate rejected President Obama’s gun control package in April 2013, gun control supporters have been trying to convince the public that there’s no possible reason for opposing something so “commonsense” as gun control, other than “cowardice.”
Anti-gun doctors in in the Sunshine State may be feeling a little queasy after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit handed them a third straight loss in their ongoing challenge to a Florida law designed to protect patients from harassing and unwarranted grilling about firearm ownership. Should these symptoms persist, the physicians should note they have a simple and foolproof remedy: simply refrain from using the doctor-patient relationship to advance a non-medical ideological and political agenda.
Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, young movie fans could enthusiastically anticipate the release of a new “Star Wars” movie without triggering a heavy-handed reprisal from school officials who perhaps identify too closely with the Empire.
2015 was a successful year for NRA and our members in the fight to protect our Second Amendment rights. As we move into 2016, our focus will be on what is the most important election cycles in many years, if not decades. We must increase our efforts to ensure we're prepared to meet the great opportunities and challenges we will face. Stay tuned to future Alerts on how we can all work together to ensure our continued success.
In this News Minute from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, Jennifer Zahrn reports that two new polls show Americans increasingly reject the Obama-Bloomberg anti-freedom agenda.
