Activist gun owners looking back at a week of choreographed meetings on gun control led by Vice President Joe Biden may have a lot of new company so far as their diminishing opinion of the Barack Obama presidency is concerned.
Lighter paychecks have a way of shaking people up, though not so much perhaps as how many gun owners can now claim “we told you so” about Obama and a second term. The Sandy Hook tragedy has allowed the Obama administration to step up it timetable on pushing gun control.
Joining their ranks will be many of the previously smirking self-proclaimed liberal gun owners who insisted before the election that their guy would “never move against guns.” Likewise, many fresh-out-of-college would-be hipsters who were deluded about who would be paying the bills on Obamacare and taxes that “only the rich will pay,” are facing a new reality.
The payroll tax hike was like a bucket of cold water on a generation of voters who honestly thought that only the wealthy were going to get stung. They now feel what firearms industry and gun rights group representatives felt last Thursday after attending that meeting with Biden. The Tea Party is making the most of it.
It is perhaps no wonder why this weekend at the Washington Arms Collectors gun show in Monroe that donations to the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation have spiked and the line to get into that show on Saturday stretched quite some distance.
This coming weekend, Jan. 19-20 — which includes Saturday’s Gun Appreciation Day observance — SAF will be formally kicking off its “Bucket of Bucks” fund raising effort. WAC’s Puyallup gun shows are always bigger.
It is part of a larger nationwide effort to demonstrate that firearms owners are not the extremists that the anti-gun political left would have the public believe.
Gun Appreciation Day has already elicited a wail from the gun prohibition lobby, which petitioned to have it stopped, as this column reported.
Meanwhile, a national effort has also been kicked off to get firearms owners more politically active at the grassroots level. Gun owners are being encouraged to send messages each week to their two senators and congressional representative to remind them that the Second Amendment protects a constitutional right.
This is serious stuff and even Sturm Ruger appears to be engaged in the battle.
On Tuesday, Biden is scheduled to present his task force’s findings to the president. After that, gun owners anticipate a fight over everything from proposed gun bans and magazine capacity limits, to executive moves against imports. Right now, it is all speculation, but by the time this week is finished, there will be battle lines drawn in the sand.
The fact that this is all happening at the same time the annual industry Shooting, Hunting and Outdoor Trade (SHOT) Show is unfolding here in Las Vegas — from whence this column will be reporting — could be the biggest error in timing that Obama has made.
Suggested reading:
Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns
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