By David Codrea
USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “It’s official. Bloomberg’s Background Checks initiative is formally named Question 1 on the Nevada ballot in this year’s election,” Nevadans for State Gun Rights advises supporters in an email alert. “It’s time to get to work.”
Past time, actually. Some of us were sounding the alarm almost two years ago about Nevadans for Background checks being a front group for Everytown. We were warning over a year before that how Bloomberg was setting up state organizations throughout the Republic, including in Nevada, to allow for just this type of slick, well-funded New York takeover.
That some Nevada gun owners are just now waking up to there being a problem illustrates one of the drawbacks facing grassroots volunteers. They have limited resources and personal lives to attend to, and they’re trying to compete for voter attention against a billionaire’s AstroTurf-rolling ground crew. That’s especially compounded by a media largely in favor of “gun control,” with further boosts from the elites:
Clark County Commissioner Chris Giunchigliani donated $2,000. Myra Greenspun, wife of Las Vegas Sun owner Brian Greenspun, donated $11,000. Money also poured in from some major resort companies: Wynn Resorts gave the group $50,000, and Caesars Entertainment Corp. gave $25,000.
By comparison:
The Nevada Firearms Coalition raised $1,100 in 2015, and the political action committee it formed to fight the Background Check Initiative, Nevadans for State Gun Rights, raised nothing. Combined, the groups spent $17,642 last year on the Reno-based firm Amplify Relations.
(What about NRA? I have a theory about why their profile is so comparatively low, but I’m going to hold on to it for a while. Why not ask them if you’re curious?)
“Question 1 is an initiative that will create a federal gun registry,” Nevadans for State Gun Rights explains. “It will require that you surrender your firearm to a federal firearms dealer in all sales and most transfers, and failure to do so before selling, buying, or transferring a firearm will be a criminal offense subject to arrest, fines, and seizure of your firearms.”
You can test those claims for yourself. First, read what Question 1 will do. Then bear in mind what no less an authority than the National Institute of Justice admitted about so-called “background checks”:
Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…
You can further prove to yourself that what the gun-grabbers really want is registration by challenging them to endorse a system like the Blind Identification Database System (BIDS), which would allow for what they say they want – making sure prohibited persons don‘t get a green light for a firearm transfer. It just wouldn’t (couldn’t) create a record of transfers that did go through. (True, although an improvement that would eliminate the danger of registration, BIDS would still represent a prior restraint which I’m not endorsing. In this case, it’s useful to bring up to show the antis are being one-sided and disingenuous — both when they talk about “background checks” and when they talk about “compromise.”)
“Pledge to Vote NO on Question 1 today with a $25 donation,” Nevadans for State Gun Rights appeals to its list recipients. “Please pass this message on to like-minded patriots to inform them to Vote NO on Question 1.”
True, that probably represents more of a disposable income percentage hit to the average gun owner than billionaire private security employer and insufferable “do-gooder” dilettante Elaine Wynn spends on disarming the hoi polloi, but when it’s all said and done, she’ll be able to retreat into a world where no one who isn’t cleared can reach her.
Once the gun-grabbers have their registration lists, they’ll be able to move on to the next phase and the next one after that. If you want to see the shape of things to come, look at what they feel emboldened to try in neighboring California.
Think it can’t happen where you are? Give that “pathway to citizenship” a few years to secure the legislatures and the courts, again, like in neighboring California.
If you’re a Nevada gun owner, you need to join Nevadans for State Gun Rights now, and become a force multiplier to help them spread the word and to wage their campaign against the Bloomberg machine. If you live outside Nevada, those on the front lines still need your help, and if the gun-grabbers prevail, they’ll be looking your way soon enough.
Now seems as good a time as any for one of my favorite Churchill quotes, especially for those who dismiss the need to get involved and help, and instead are inclined to offer a cavalier “Molon labe!” comment:
“If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.”
Why not show once more you can do the easy stuff first, before real risks and sacrifices are required?
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament.
In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
So, did Question 1 pas in Nevada?
Wake up Nevada or we will end up like California!!
I can’t believe Bloomberg is going after Arizona at all. The moron is wasting his time in AZ because they won’t bend or budge to any gungrabbing schemes orchestrated by this piece of shit. The good people of Arizona know what time it is. I guess Texas must be in his crosshairs too. Like AZ that will be a huge mistake by the parasite.
Run that midget out of the US !
This needs to be stopped. Grass roots types can share articles like this on social media, donate to the groups in question, like the groups on Facebook, volunteer to work with the groups, post comments under newspaper stories in Nevada, etc. Articles like this need to be posted and reposted everywhere relevant though. The fascist and racist Bloomberg must be stopped.
Bloomberg one of the most Anti-American
Anti-Freedom people on earth.
I hope Nevadans demonstrate more collective grit than its namby-pamby brothers two states to the east.
Or the one immediately to your West. I’ll be visiting a bit more often to make sure I maintain my felon status in Kommieforniastan.
I used to wonder how people could be so stupid, believing that these laws they’re trying to enact are for their, and the children’s safety, but then I see people voting for the Hillbeast, and I found yes, people really are stupid.
During the Colorado recall the NRA kept a low profile to lessen the distraction from the media and other anti-civil rights forces that did occur blaming the NRA as anti-democracy.