Were I to listen to the most outspoken members of the gun rights community I would be lead to believe that the Republican Party believes in gun rights. For my sake I’m glad I don’t listen to them and recognized the Republican Party for what it is, the exact same thing as the Democrats minus their chosen party color and totem animal. Whenever I express this belief around other gun rights activists I’m almost always challenged by some dyed in the wool Republican. I’m lucky, little argument for my position is necessary as it is continuously confirmed by Republicans voting in favor of gun control:
un-control legislation survived its first key test vote in the Senate on Thursday, signaling that a bill will finally come to the chamber floor and setting up a bruising floor battle over background checks and gun and ammunition bans.
[…]
Sixteen Republicans voted in favor of the motion. Two Democrats — Mark Begich of Alaska and Mark Pryor of Arkansas — voted against it. Both are up for re-election in 2014.
I can already hear gun rights activists across the nation promising that they will work to ensure those 16 Republicans are voted out of office. I also know that, with very few exceptions, they won’t follow through with their promise. How do I know this? History tends to run in parallel paths. Whenever a Republican votes in favor of gun control gun rights activists say they will ensure that Republican won’t get reelected. By the time the election rolls around those very same gun rights activists will make up an excuse to justify supporting that candidate. Usually the excuse sounds something like, “I know his history on gun rights isn’t perfect but things will be much worse if the Democrat challenger gets into office!” Case in point, gun rights activists claimed they would do everything in their power to ensure Mitt Romney didn’t get another political position after he supported gun control as governor of Massachusetts. During the last presidential election gun rights activists supported Romney and demanded other gun owners support Romney because he was “better than Obama.”
So long as you fall for the false dichotomy inherent in our political system you will forever be suckered into supporting gun control advocates. This is because, in most cases, you’ll only be given the choice between an extreme gun control advocate or an apparently less zealous gun control advocate. Regardless of who wins you’ll lose. You might believe that one candidate will ensure that you’ll lose at a slightly slower rate but even that isn’t true because those less zealous gun control advocates will make deals with the more zealous gun control advocates in order to achieve other political agendas. In the political realm your so-called right to bear arms is nothing more than a bargaining chip used by political candidates to sucker you into supporting them and by politicians to trade trade with other politicians.
If you want to protect your ability to own a firearm then you need to take direct action. Direct action is the only tactic that has a history of delivering goods. As long as you rely on the political system you will find your ability of own firearms more and more restricted. After all it was the political system that robbed us of our legal ability to own machine guns registered after May 19th, 1986, mail order firearms directly to our homes, purchase new “assault weapons” and standard capacity magazines for 10 years, and own any firearms if the state labeled us felons.