Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 95

MEANWHILE, IN DENVER AND CHICAGO…

Hey, Coloradans – the Backwoods Home team is gonna be in Denver! Come and meet them at the  Self Reliance Expo at the National Western Complex in Denver this weekend, Nov 4-5.

At the BHM booth will be: Dave Duffy, Jeff Yago, Illustrator Don Childers and his wife Nancy, Jackie Clay, and Lenie Duffy. In this photo are, from left, Lenie, Dave, Don, and Nancy.

And: Last night, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series!  Since my significant other is a native Chicagoan as are many of my extended family, I get to bask in the reflective glow of their heartland happiness.

It has been over a century since the Cubs won the Series. With us coming down to the wire and Hillary Clinton reportedly still in the lead, the Cubs victory is a reassuring reminder that miracles happen.

Or watch video here.

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THOUGHTS ON HALLOWEEN

Well, about the scariest thing I’ve seen so far this October 31 is this, shamelessly taken from my friend Miggy Gonzales’ blog at gunfreezone.net:

Drive carefully out there amongst the trick-or-treating rug rats.

I’ve been asked why this blog has been on politics more than guns, and will be until the election. The answer is simply that if the politics go wrong, we’re gonna start losing our right to own and use the guns at a rapid rate.

Over this past month, I can point to about 125 good reasons to fight hard to keep those rights. 24 students trained in a MAG-40 class hosted by the Reichard family in Indiana. 38 deadly force instructors certified by me and Marty Hayes in a forty hour course sponsored by Dave Maglio in Wisconsin. Another 31 at our Michigan MAG-40 hosted by Art Joslin, and 32 at the one we just finished in Florida under the auspices of Herman Gunter, III.

Those 125 people are the tip of the iceberg of the armed citizens the Democratic Presidential nominee has bluntly stated she doesn’t want to own AR15s, or magazines that hold more than ten cartridges. She has stated that she agrees with one of the Supreme Court justices who dissented in the decision that affirmed the Second Amendment as an individual right; that justice recently stated that he doesn’t think the 2A means you can keep a rifle by your bed.

We ALL need to do everything we can to keep Hillary Clinton out of the White House, and those who parrot her out of the House and Senate. It won’t be over ‘til it’s over, and there are increasing signs it may not be over even after the election is tallied up.

 

 

Indiana MAG-40 class

Wisconsin Deadly Force Instructor class

Michigan MAG-40 class

Florida MAG-40 class

Florida MAG-40 class, with staff range officers/coaches behind the students on the firing line.

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SPREAD THE WORD: BACKWOODS HOME RESOURCES

Time is short as what may be the most important election of our lifetimes approaches. Every vote is critical, not only in the race for the White House but the critical downstream races for House and Senate.  If we hold the Senate, we have a chance to shortstop devastatingly bad Supreme Court appointments that will literally tilt the Court for generations.

Spread the word. If every gun owner votes to defeat the candidate who demonizes them, Hillary Clinton, we can keep her from taking power. Too many gun owners still believe the false meme that “Hillary believes in the Second Amendment.”

In the time of electronic communication, there are many informative links you can share with potential voters you know to get the truth out there.  You can share them more widely with letters to the editors of your local newspapers.

Backwoods Home Magazine offers a couple such in its current edition.  Because third party votes are likely to tip the election to Clinton – as they once did for her husband; remember Ross Perot? – please reach out to those you know who are turned off on both candidates, and share why a vote for Trump is important to keeping our rights, whether we like him or not. Libertarian Dave Duffy explains why he’s voting pragmatically instead of idealistically this time, here.

And I have another installment of my series on understanding the gun control debate, here.  Feel free to share it along with its earlier companion piece, here.

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ON HILLARY’S POPULARITY

Is there a possibility that we have been misled about the inevitability of a Hillary Clinton Presidency? One dares to hope.  Am I the only one who has noticed we’re seeing far fewer “X For President” signs on homeowners’ lawns than we have in past elections?  It would be in keeping with the general lack of enthusiasm we’re seeing for either candidate. That said, though, most places I go when I do see those lawn signs, there are a lot more for Trump than for Clinton.

Can we have – gasp – been misinformed? Well, here’s what they have to say about it over at The Conservative Treehouse.

And of course, she has declared the NRA to be the “enemy,” and by extension, all of us five million or so members. Her animosity toward gun-owning citizens is not by any means limited to the National Rifle Association. It extends, apparently, to any and all who keep firearms for self-defense. The woman is pretty cavalier about whom she antagonizes.

Including cops. Hillary Clinton proclaimed no interest in an endorsement by a major police union; it’s not every Democrat who turns down union endorsements.   Mrs. Clinton, by all accounts, has small love for law enforcement including those who protect her. Her disdain for her Secret Service bodyguards is legend.  Apparently the FBI agents assigned as her executive security when she was Secretary of State also found it to be true.

Spread the word. Time is short.

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PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: BEWARE FLYING STOOL(S)

Hillary will ban, if she can, fifteen round magazines like there. See what NRA has to say.

The pundits warn us that we can expect tonight’s Presidential debate, the third and final, to be the nastiest of an extremely nasty campaign.  Will Trump cry, “B*tch of Benghazi”?  Will Clinton snarl back “Fascist f*ck,” a term she has reportedly applied to her adversary behind closed doors?  One flings an old hot mic dialogue, the other’s riposte is the latest from Wikileaks.

NRA this month points out that a President Hillary Clinton would be likely to: “Ban semi-autos; Mandate “Universal” background checks; Overturn Heller; Shut down gun shows; Implement Australian confiscation & registration; Use tax dollars to promote gun control; Secret government list bans; Ban online gun advertising; Extreme executive actions on guns; End lawful access to guns; (and) Repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.”

In a campaign that’s already looking a bit like Saturday afternoon wrestling, will the candidates go all the way with that and throw their debate stools at each other?

After all, they’ve been throwing another kind of stool at one another for a while now…

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LOOKING DOWNSTREAM

My, it has been an interesting last few days.  As we come down to the wire of the election, things aren’t looking good from the gun owners’ perspective.

The “L” party might have foreseen that this year would have been the best ever to really put a third party on the radar screen.  Instead, they dragged their feet and didn’t offer candidates to the public until late in the game.  Their Presidential candidate seems to think Aleppo is a brand of dog food, their Veep choice was a vehement anti-gunner when he occupied a Governor’s Mansion, and they really aren’t in position to do anything but suck votes away from the one person who can beat the candidate who has declared us to be an “enemy.”

The “R” party had four years to mentor a viable candidate, didn’t, and got what it got. Whether Donald Trump has been hoisted by his own petard in the last few days, or sandbagged by hostile media and political machines, or both, his candidacy has been badly hurt.

My own biggest concern is the House and Senate.  The next President will doubtless appoint multiple Supreme Court justices in a time when even the one due appointee will tip the balance of our highest Court.  That nominee will have to be confirmed by the Senate.  Now, I’m an Independent, not a Republican, but I’m one of the many other people Ronald Reagan was speaking for when he said “I didn’t abandon the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party abandoned me.” You have only to look at the Democrats’ own published platform to see how hostile the Ds are to law-abiding American gun owners.

I implore you, don’t give up and boycott the election. Vote for pro-gun candidates in the House and Senate.  Vote for pro-gun candidates within your own state legislatures, where the Bloomberg anti-gun forces will be pushing heavily for state-by-state restrictions in the coming years.

It matters.

Hugely.

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AFTER THE LATEST DEBATE…

…there IS no debate, at least for people who want to keep their gun rights.

It was sad that neither candidate could give a straight answer to simple questions.

They say the devil you know beats the devil you don’t. This is the first time I can remember where I’ve had to choose the devil I don’t know, because the devil I do know so blatantly hates my kind and everything I stand for.

I am one of the five million plus NRA members Hillary Clinton has declared to be her enemy. She has publicly praised the Australian “gun control” scheme in which the government confiscates firearms legally purchased and responsibly owned by law abiding citizens. Her deep contempt for law enforcement, including her own Arkansas State Police bodyguards in the past and Secret Service agents since, is widely known.  More recently, without hearing from the police defense side, she called police shootings “intolerable” – a poor showing of ethics or fairness by a woman who was once an attorney, after she finally passed the bar exam.  I’m a cop; I’m a law-abiding gun owner; and I am not inclined to vote for people who hate and demonize me and Americans like me.

On this litmus test issue, Donald Trump has come out for our side. Yes, at one time he supported the “assault weapons ban,” but he has since foresworn that publicly.  Hillary Clinton has been implacably anti-gun and anti-police for her entire career. The devil I don’t know can’t possibly be worse than the devil who has made herself clearly known.

I understand why many people I respect are voting for third party candidates. But it’s clear that those candidates can’t win.  The “statement” made by voting for them gives only an empty, self-righteous “feel-good” moment to that particular voter, and does not serve the common good.  It appears that third party votes will draw mostly from the Trump side, not the Clinton side, and equal a vote for Clinton…not a good thing for those to whom either justice or the right to self-protection is important. If you look at the polls, predicted Trump votes plus predicted third party votes will be enough to defeat Clinton, but predicted Trump votes alone will not.

We remember when Ross Perot was the spoiler whose third party votes gave us eight years of a Bill Clinton presidency, and the ten onerous years of the Assault Weapons Ban.

Which is why I for one am inclined to hold my nose and vote for Donald Trump.

 

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ON “GUN CONTROL”

I have an article on “Understanding the Gun Control Debate” in the current issue of Backwoods Home.  It’s the first of three parts, with part 2 due out soon in the next issue.

The election is almost upon us.  If Hillary Clinton is elected, she will appoint Supreme Court justices whose opinions will shape our nation for the next couple of generations.  She has declared NRA members to be “the enemy.”  There are still people who say, “But Hillary swears she believes in the Second Amendment.”  That ignores the fact that she said SCOTUS got it wrong in the Heller and McDonald decisions that said the right to keep and bear arms was an individual right, not an empowerment of state militias.  She has spoken favorably of the Australian model of mandatory confiscation of semiautomatic rifles.

Be active. Write respectful letters to the editor or essays for the op-ed pages in your local newspapers.  Feel free to link the above-mentioned article.

Our future as gun-owners is on the line, and we’re getting down to the wire.

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NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM

Schedules are funny things.  Months ago, I knew that September of this year was going to be consumed by a wrongful death trial in Federal court on one coast and a murder trial on the other, with some days allotted for the Texas Bar Association’s annual Firearms Law Seminar, and the Gun Rights Policy Conference.  That left only a couple of days at the end of the month for a regular training class, which is what I’m doing as I write this.

When not one but both trials postponed (not an uncommon occurrence), I figured the Evil Princess and I might have a few rare days of free time.

No such luck.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  An opportunity came up to take a Ruger new product seminar, at the awesome FTW Ranch in Texas.  It coincided well with the Bar Association seminar.  An annual periodical I used to write was resurrected when a publisher bought the rights to the title from the original publisher, which had closed its doors earlier in the year…and the deadlines were coming up close.

There was also an invitation to lecture in the town where I live on how Stand Your Ground laws actually work, and to be guest speaker at a local Republican Committee meeting where I advised them not to take gun owners for granted because a whole lot of them were inclined to cast protest votes for a third party.

Each of those opportunities turned out to be useful and enjoyable, so I really can’t complain.

Christmas. Yeah, that’s it.  I’ll relax around…Christmas.

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A VOICE FROM GRPC

The Gun Rights Policy Conference has broadened the diversity of both speakers and attendees since the first one I attended decades ago.  But the entire gun owners’ civil rights movement still has some distance to go on that.

I was happy to see Tiffany Johnson at the GRPC for the first time. Tiffany is an attorney, a person of color, and one of the best of the “younger generation” in the movement. Check out her insights here: http://frontsightpress.com/2016/09/take-the-gun-away/.

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