Fight the right battle

From The Washington Post:

In lobbying, a threat is good for business, whether it's genuine or not.

This might help to explain the dire warnings being issued by the National Rifle Association as the Democrats prepare to take control of Congress this week.

"The new leadership could be one of the most unfriendly to the National Rifle Association," declared Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the NRA. "If there's an effort to pursue gun control, we will mount an active defense."

The famously combative lobby, with 4 million members, is displeased with the voting histories of Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and other top Democrats in the House and is putting them on notice that it won't tolerate passage of anti-gun measures.

The only problem: No one expects gun legislation this year.

There is a fact which most people in the pro-gun community have failed to grasp. That fact is that we have won.

Not the war. The war never ends because human nature never changes. However we have won the battle. "Battle" being defined as the effort to change the political culture in such a way as to take gun control off the table politically for the current generation - at the national level.

Of course the war continues with battles being fought in state legislatures and local communities. The battle of New Orleans is ongoing with the NRA assisting Crescent City gun owners in recovering their firearms which were illegally seized by police during Katrina.

I have news for the unfortunate gun owners of New Orleans. You will never see your firearms again, unless it is on the shelves of a pawn shop or gun store or a display table of a gun show because your guns were divided up among the cops as "spoils" and they will either keep them or sell them. Sorry, but that's the truth and it will remain so as long as you keep electing politicians who create a political culture more like a Third World banana republic than an American city.

But I digress. The point is that gun control has proven itself to be a consistently losing issue outside of certain left-wing regions like New Jersey and Manhattan and San Francisco. The politicians of both parties have gotten the point and so the battle for our firearms rights will be fought out in state legislatures and town councils for the next 13 years, at least.

Of course Senators and Representatives occupying left-wing safe seats (think Ted Kennedy) will continue to introduce gun control legislation, but it will be dead on arrival.

By all means maintain your NRA membership because a strong association is one of the things helping to create the current pro-gun, or I should say anti-gun control, climate. Just don't get your underwear in a bunch over the new congress, at least not where firearms are concerned.

I can't close this post without sharing this bit with you. Here is the quote from the Brady Bunch:

Veteran NRA-watchers have seen such rhetoric before. "This is vintage NRA fear tactics from an organization that knows how to use them to energize a base of supporters who have an unhealthy terror that the forces of government will take their guns away," said Peter Hamm, spokesman for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "It's both ugly and untrue."

"Ugly and untrue". This is coming from the spokesman for the organization which exists to lobby government to take people's guns away. This is why, no matter how many battles we win, the war will never be over.