What GOP and 'gun lobby' should be willing to yield: Absolutely nothing

Much ink has been spilled over the last few days over yesterday's attendance by the NRA and other gun rights advocacy groups at the White House's (possibly illegal?) "anti-violence" task force meeting. Some have characterized such a meeting as something of a "clash of the titans"--others, not so much.

According to the mass media, anti-gun politicians and forcible citizen disarmament groups (but I repeat myself), the NRA is synonymous with "the gun lobby"--a blatantly untrue assumption. The "gun lobby" is you, me, and millions of other gun owners, including many of us who do not share the NRA's (let alone the National Shooting Sports Foundation's) willingness to compromise our Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

Many of us do not accept the notion that we have any moral obligation to surrender any of our rights, in a doomed attempt to thwart the twisted evil of others. "But," the more "pragmatic" tell us, "this time, the 'gun control' lobby, emboldened by the (entirely proper) public outrage over the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, is coming at us harder than ever in history--unless we negotiate and compromise, we will be trampled."

Bullsh . . . I mean, I beg to differ. Preemptive surrender is not a "strategy" for anything but showing weakness. Every inch of ground we give up is a larger beach head for the next assault on our rights, and the next, and the next, until the other side stops pouring scorn on the "slippery slope" argument, and instead finishes proving it--and judging by elected officials' public musings about confiscating guns, that process is looking much further along than it did just a month ago.

We can either wage the fight of our lives, and risk losing, or appease, surrender and collaborate--and guarantee it. Besides, why should we assume this is a fight we cannot win? The other side is not making that assumption. E.J. Dionne, who definitely represents "the other side," is not, as he wrote in his Real Clear Politics article, titled "Gun Sanity [as defined by Dionne] Needs Bipartisanship":

But there is a political truth that must be faced: Absolutely nothing positive will happen on this issue unless a substantial number of Republicans insist that we act.

Similarly, Chris Cilizza and Aaron Blake, writing for the Washington Post, claim that "Joe Biden [head of the "anti-violence" task force] needs the NRA":

But, the meeting is smart politics by Biden — and the White House more broadly. It’s a recognition that, to pass something on guns through Congress, they need the NRA either on board or not totally in opposition to the proposal.

Why? Like them or hate them — and there are lots of people who feel both ways — the NRA has proven to be among the best-funded and most effective groups when it comes to swaying the sentiments of members of Congress.

Evidence for that assertion can be found in the NICS "Improvement" Act of 2007, which has ended up disarming in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand veterans because they suffer such "mental illness" as needing help balancing their checkbooks. Now, trying to partially repair that damage, by requiring such a disarmament ruling to be made by a judge, is presented as being "pro-veteran suicide." The tragic irony here is that the NRA helped write the NICS "Improvement" Act, which is widely thought to have been impossible to pass without NRA support, or at least the absence of NRA resistance.

If the "gun control" extremists cannot win without GOP and "gun lobby" complicity, then denying that complicity is all that is required to defeat it--and failure to deny it is collaboration and betrayal. With gun rights advocacy groups' membership rolls growing by the hour, we can defeat the rights denial lobby.

Give them nothing. Not an inch, not a millimeter. Fight them at every step. Fight them as if our lives and liberties depend on it, because they do. Draw inspiration not from Neville Chamberlain, but from Winston Churchill (see sidebar video).

We may still lose, and restrictive new laws may still pass. Then we must defy them. And if that fails, the fight is still not over.