Find Solutions Before Bloomberg Stooges Come for Your Rights

Texas/Ohio/United States –-(Ammoland.com)- There are times when defending the Second Amendment is going to require a cold, hard look at reality. We may be hitting one such point in the wake of the horrific acts of evil done in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. To protect our rights, we need to have solutions. We’re already behind the eight-ball on this.

Second Amendment supporters are always wrongly blamed as being complicit in mass shootings. As evidenced during CNN’s nationally-televised Second Amendment shaming event after the Parkland shooting, those who defend our rights are accused of standing shoulder to shoulder with the wicked murderers. It’s a blood libel, and we should not let ourselves be shamed into silence for defending ourselves from an unjust and wrongful deprivation of liberty by that blood libel.

We have stood between millions of Americans who have not shot up a Walmart, bar, school, concert, or other public venue and the politicians who would impose the cruel injustices we see being enacted in New Zealand and which already have hit Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. For that, we are defamed as child killers and domestic terrorists. It’s not fair, it’s wrong, but the vast majority of today’s mass media doesn’t stand for truth. They’re too busy joining the mob and spreading the lies.

So, we need to come up with solutions. Whether the Second Amendment grants a right or codifies one that exists (for the record, the latter is the case) is an irrelevant theoretical discussion. The soccer mom scared half to death about her child’s school being the site of the next mass shooting doesn’t give a damn either way – if she is scared enough, she’ll back a Bloomberg stooge in an instant. So just screaming “Second Amendment” at those calls, while viscerally satisfying, and which will earn plaudits in a comment section, is actually counter-productive. That soccer mom will then happily sign on to the Bloomberg agenda – fully buying into their lies about us in the process.

Right now, to protect the Second Amendment, we need to have something concrete to address these issues. For instance, Ted Cruz has been working to come up with a “red flag” law that protects due process. Now, this is not a case of “Negotiating Rights Away,” not by a long shot. It’s actually tactical and strategic competence – the type of thing Second Amendment supporters should be insisting on from those who claim to be protecting our rights.

Given the present realities, the best bet is to put up a version of a “red flag” law that has due process protections (including penalties for maliciously false reports and requirements for the guns to be stored securely) and treatment for those who are suffering from acute mental health crises. For a bonus, include some fixes to the National Instant Check System, while also having it override any state or local waiting period or licensing scheme. What will happen?

In the best-case scenario, the less onerous red flag law (with the NICS fixes and the overriding of licensing schemes and waiting periods) passes the Senate or is killed by a filibuster led by Charles Schumer and other anti-Second Amendment extremists, while Nancy Pelosi refuses to bring such bill up for a vote in the House. If the House passes a more onerous version, the Senate can always put the less onerous version in as an amendment, and there are enough pro-Second Amendment senators to filibuster the more onerous version, especially when they can point to an alternative they support that addressing things that the bad bill doesn’t.

If the less onerous version passes and is enacted into law, while there would be some infringement, it would also see an end to waiting periods and licensing schemes across the country. Not an ideal outcome, but better than having a Bloomberg-written version that would have no due process protections, no mental health treatment, and which could even allow the cops who take the guns to store them in a manner that leaves them wrecked, and the gun owner no recourse to be compensated for the damage. We took a hit, but the damage is not so bad, and other infringements were taken out in the process.

Either way, after the successful defense that exposes the refusal of anti-Second Amendment extremists to address mental heath or to protect due process, then the counter-attack can come on two fronts. The first is education about the facts surrounding Second Amendment issues, including where our rights come from, and what Heller really means.

The second part is to fully pierce the phony cloak of compassion that anti-Second Amendment extremist wrap themselves in. This is what was done successfully after the 1999 Columbine shooting. Once anti-Second Amendment extremists killed a gun show bill that was not onerous enough, the NRA launched the counter-offensive, highlighted by Wayne LaPierre’s harsh and accurate description of Bill Clinton’s attitude.

How did that turn out? Well, Al Gore pushed gun control and lost the 2000 presidential election and two of the five justices that made up the majority in the Heller and McDonald decisions that struck down handgun bans while reaffirming the Second Amendment protected the right to keep and bear arms were confirmed to the Supreme Court. But let’s remember how the first part of that fight was won.

About Harold Hutchison

Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.