Some folks are concerned that the NRA isn’t opposing the nomination of Eric Holder, a man not familiar with the 2nd Amendment, as Attorney General of the United States, enough. Tempers flare, and the calmer folks point out that it may be a waste of political capital to put the full press against him.
I’m of this “Pick your battles” philosophy. Yes, an unfriendly AG could cause no end of headaches to freedom loving civil rights proponents like us, infringing on our inherent Human Rights, by trying to limit lawful firearm ownership with legal harassment and dubious other means. But I’d rather the NRA hold its fire and be ready to go great guns against any Assault Weapons Ban that is rumored to be queued up and in the offing.
Or to oppose progress on the registration/confiscation of law abiding gun owners property Bill, HR 45
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Pick your battles. Do you oppose a landing by a hostile army on the beaches or do you let the enemy create a defended beachhead to launch attacks from? The Japanese military doctrine was not to oppose the landing and we see how that effective that was. The British, Americans, Nazis all followed the doctrine of denying any beachhead as the wiser course. Pick your battles, indeed. I'd say, stop it at its onset rather than fighting a harder battle later on.
We can't hold the Phillipines in 1942, Jim. I pick Guadalcanal as my battle.
People need to go watch "Gran Torino". You pick your battles, and you also have to pick how you fight those battles.
The last thing you want to do is pick a fight, bloody a nose and get your own bloodied and accomplish nothing but gang hostilities.
I am of the opinion that you want one of two outcomes:
a) you know you can win and your cleaning up trash (ie: you take out the bully and make the playground safe)
b) you take the high road, and you are beaten and brutalized maybe murdered. But the result is so much outrage that the perpetrators now find themselves as the target of the masses, enemy of the people. (ie: MLK, martyrs, Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino).
Holder did not offer either potential victory. It'd have been a waste. Far worse than the supporting of McCain was. Honestly, I think the NRA goofed. They should have endorsed Sarah Palin and been neutral on McCain.
HR 45 and an unscrupulous AG are two halves of the same thing: the final resolution for the disarmament of the people. (The state, of course, is excluded.)
The disarmers caved on registration back when the GCA 68 was being pushed; but they figured they could make it up later. Regardless, retail sales, repair, shipping and manufacture were under control. (The only place were this is being challenged is Montana.) That was forty years ago. Disarmament is taking too long, so now they're going to try a licensing-revocation-prohibition strategy. This has worked very well in California and New Jersey.
I'm going to make a prediction: "gun owners" are going to walk into this one; they will happily surrender their rights. The disarmers probably understand that the best way to attract gun owners to a licensing scheme is to offer some incentive. That incentive will likely be national concealed carry. That won't be what it's called, but the disarmers will pick a name that is reminiscent.
There is a long-standing tradition of creating pseudo-amendments by passing federal statutes, and having state legislatures craft laws that reference those statutes. It has the appearance of legality because it apparently has the power of an amendment, and the process seems similar--if one only ignores the unconstitutionality of the original statute. So I think states are going to walk into it as well.
The NRA has been lukewarm on Holder, though they have not yet been unfaithful to their membership. I suspect this is because they hope to accrue some political capital, then expend it negotiating for goodies in the final version of the national registration bill. (It may not necessarily be what Bobby Rush originally offered.) That's why their relative passivity--as well as the Senate's--scares me. We'll get some sort of national carry, but it will be burdened by new GFZs, safe storage mandates for transport, weapon classification and hair-trigger revocation standards which will circumvent jury trials.
This is just my prediction, of course. However, I think I'm on solid ground. In addition to the above, here's why I think so:
* Most gun owners see no constitutional problems with licensing schemes in their own states--these in-place systems simply need to be extended;
* most gun owners saw concealed carry permits as a new benefit and did not attack the illegal enforcement of no-carry laws--which created the necessity for carry licensing to begin with;
* "pro-gun" types have been pushing for national licensing for years, in the guise of "national concealed carry";
Look, Eric Holder is a sharp guy. I'm sure he knows what's going on, and when he takes office, his advice will not be ignored. The Congress is mostly Democrats, so of course they will screw it all up. However, we'll move another notch toward disarmament.
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