Reader Rick B. writes:
“What happens next?” is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. I don’t know the answer and that concerns me. It’s clear that the recent shootings, along with the reelection of Obama have empowered a large mass of pro gun-control politicians to take action. It’s also clear, that we must do our best to take our cause to blogs like yours, pro gun organizations, and grass-roots methods to keep our message out there, since we’ve long lost the mass media. But we will need to do more . . .
What happens next after a state has turned gun-control bills into law? I suspect that there will be a few more states that will follow Connecticut and Colorado. My home state of Illinois is trying to catch up with its Chicago machine-bred leadership squad. An upcoming election seems to be more about which Democrat candidate can out-liberal the other – gun-hating Attorney General Lisa Madigan (of Moore vs. Madigan) is leading over gun hating incumbent Quinn, and she hasn’t announced that she’s running yet. Downstate Illinois has been holding these people off, but Lisa’s dad, the Speaker of the House in the Illinois General Assembly, has been trying every dirty trick he knows to get some gun control passed so he can collect his presidential visit memorial pin.
Meanwhile Bloomberg is pumping money into Chicago candidates based on their gun-control stance. Recently Gov. Quinn managed to modify some of the districts to decrease the conservative influence of a few of the collar counties including areas of DuPage county – a former Republican stronghold. Effectively their team has a strategy and has already begun, while the pro-gun groups are looking like they may be out-gunned (pun intended).
I think Illinois is next. And the conceal carry bill due this summer is just going to be a useless skin tag of a “may-issue” permit that allows you to keep an unloaded revolver in your pocket every other Tuesday, as long as you have the right breeding, insurance, photo RFID tracking device and promise not to actually leave your house with it.
And what happens after the next mass shooting? That’s when I worry about these magazine registrations becoming magazine confiscations. This is when the president will not go to committee, but will pass gun-control terror in the middle of the night. After the next shooting, the “slave” states will come down harder on their people, the federal government will slam regulations through and the free states will be left standing as a target for the media to pick on. You will see good men have their homes sacked by armored policemen looking for black rifles. And the people will celebrate when it happens because they truly won’t know any better.
It doesn’t matter where that shooting will occur, our teams will be battling the “SAFE Acts” of the nation in court and hardly able to take on new fronts.
What is our plan after the next shooting? I think we need one. I believe we need a great media and political offense. I don’t think we can afford to wait to respond, and we must come out swinging – united as one.
Within TTAG I see an interesting slice of people. What concerns me is that we fail to unite. We don’t rally on a common message. One guy is off on the deep-end crying about treachery while someone else is arguing the shooter didn’t have an AR, another post is flaming away because he mentioned the wrong way to hang a roll of toilet paper, the next post will just be full of racist venom, and the last two folks are bashing the NRA because they like the SAF better. And all these posts will be regarding a review about a scope. (I might be exaggerating a little bit now.) I know it’s our forum and we’re trying to settle out the best ideas amongst our own, but someone needs to step in and organize us while we’re at war. And right now, we’re at war (that’s not an exaggeration).
Every-time someone is arguing the NRA kills children we must be shouting back louder that Brady/Obama/Emanuel/Bloomberg killed children. We should rally that gun rights are protection rights. We must keep our message simple and palatable. We must remember that our audience isn’t ourselves. That’s the real reason why terms like, “full retard” and “slave state” are better if not used in a public forum.
We’re going to need to raise money. We’re going to have to buy air-time. We’ll need charismatic spokesmen to present our message in terms that my very conservative – Texan – Republican mother-in-law would understand. Currently she has been influenced to support an assault weapons ban. We’re going to have to out-Bloomberg Bloomberg. We’ll have to out-smart Obama. And we’ll need to speak better than any of them.
What happens next is going to be harder than ever. This is just the opening salvo of the gun-control government. They are holding the finishing-move for the next mass shooting. We have to be ready to fight back effectively.
I ask what happens next because I’m certain our enemies have a plan – they demanded one (that line cracks me up). I’m concerned that we don’t.
Thanks for keeping up the good fight,
Rick