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United States – -(AmmoLand.com)- With all the threats of “red flag” laws and criticisim about the NRA, maybe we need to take a look at what the bigger picture is showing. It is always easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, but you sometimes have to take a step back – and a look at the big picture shows that Second Amendment supporters have been winning the arguments.
You’re wondering, “How could we be winning the arguments?” Well, my first response is to point at what some of the most visible anti-Second Amendment extremists have been doing. Does their behavior look like that of a person who is secure about the strength of their arguments?
For starters, let’s look at Andrew Cuomo. His track record of wrongfully blaming and trying to punish law-abiding gun owners is very extensive. He’s tried so many times to use back door approaches to get the types of policies he has wanted, whether through quarterbacking lawsuits against gun manufacturers or by his abuse of financial regulations to target the NRA.
Through the adoption of methods reminiscent of the strong-man tactics of the Maduro regime in Venezuela, the Erdogan regime in Turkey, or the Putin regime in Russia, Cuomo has made the tacit admission that he has really lost the arguments about the Second Amendment. The fact that he is not trying to persuade people to see things his way but instead choosing to try and bully his political opposition into silence speaks volumes. One does not do this if they are winning an argument on the merits.
In one sense, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo lost the argument in a pair of Supreme Court cases decided before he even took office.
A decade before began his illegal and tyrannical abuse of financial regulations to target organizations that support the Second Amendment, the Heller decision of 2008 declared the Second Amendment as an individual right. The 2010 McDonald decision, issued before he even won the governorship, said that the Second Amendment was applicable to the states.
Now, while at times, some want to talk about reversing these landmark cases by packing the courts, that is a long shot, especially if President Trump is able to nominate the replacements for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer – making such a move an obvious power grab. Some are choosing another long shot, calling for the repeal of the Second Amendment. In Hawaii, the state senate has issued just such a resolution. In Florida, there is a push to repeal that state’s right to keep and bear arms, instead declaring the National Guard and law enforcement agencies as the state’s militia.
But the repeal efforts, no matter how much John Paul Stevens or others might try to spin them, are a fundamental concession by anti-Second Amendment extremists. They know they are trying to take away freedoms that are rightfully ours. They know that we have every right to the firearms we feel can best protect us.
Backing this up in the case of semi-auto bans is the settlement that the Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed reached with the Justice Department last year. In that settlement, the Justice Department has admitted that modern multi-purpose semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15 are not “weapons of war” as anti-Second Amendment extremists like Dianne Feinstein, Chris Murphy, and Chuck Schumer claim.
In essence, between the Heller and McDonald rulings, as well as the SAF/Defense Distributed settlement, Second Amendment supporters have won the big arguments and hold the legal high ground. The only way to blow it is with bad strategy and tactics or failing to think about how our support for the Second Amendment comes across.
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.