By Dan Shea
Watching the primaries… and watching and watching, waiting to hear the magic words. I still haven’t heard them. “I swear to the American people that I will not violate their God given, Constitutionally guaranteed Right to Keep and Bear Arms.” Guess I better not hold my breath waiting to hear that. Alan Keyes is the only candidate who talks like that, and he’s not even showing on the radar at the moment.
In New Hampshire, traditionally if you ran for office, you had to publicly state that you would not support any new taxes. That worked for many years, and sure enough, as soon as they stopped having to say those words, the politicians have instituted some new taxes. It should be our job to have a litmus test.
What if we started really holding the politicians to that kind of litmus test on firearms issues? I mean, no slack, no wiggle room, flat out – hand on a bible, on camera- swearing that they wouldn’t do it? Would it work? Am I being unrealistic and not “Cognizant” of “Media problems”?
It seems to me that every time we let the liberals frame the issue, and mark out the boundaries of the debates, we lose. You might ask me to name one person who drew the line in the sand and stood his ground – and won.
Ronald Wilson Reagan. Did we NFA people lose something under his stewardship? Yes. But, did he back down all the time, and snivel and apologize for what he believed in? Resounding NO! Reagan said unpopular things fairly frequently, and was trivialized by those oh-so sophisticated media pundits. They waited in the sidelines to ridicule his every word.
But Americans in general didn’t buy that smear campaign; they liked what the man said. He stuck to his guns. He was re-elected in a landslide, with the popular vote overwhelmingly in his favor.
It is hard to make “Machine gun ownership” a warm and fuzzy issue. Almost every day we read about “guns” being used to kill someone- used in bizarre crimes- truly scary stuff. Probably not as scary as poisonings, or knifings, or being beaten to death, but let’s not get picky here.
I’d be preaching to the choir again if I waxed into a rant about how availability of firearms is simply not the issue here, it is criminal behavior. Instead, I would like to urge our readership onward with the duty that we have, to keep the politicians honest so they don’t continue selling out the Constitution that we were given. Stand tall, speak quietly and honestly, and let them know we are there, and we are a majority. Albeit not the media’s majority, but on Election Day, if the prospective representatives of the people of this country perceive that they are honest, trustworthy and righteous, they will probably get elected to office.
In this age of William Jefferson Clinton- how can I say that with a straight face? Simply because most of us don’t have anyone to believe in when we go to the polls, and we are thirsting for that- someone to talk about “that shining city on the hill”. The clowns and thieves have been elected because so many people sit out the elections in disgust at the options.
Let’s see if we can do something to change that this coming November.
– Dan
| This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V3N8 (May 2000) |
