USA – -(Ammoland.com)- “When we win, we are going to ban assault weapons in Florida,” Tallahassee Mayor and Democrat nominee for Governor of Florida Andrew Gillum threatened on Twitter. It’s an indication of how far the place once derided by the citizen disarmament lobby as “The Gunshine State” has fallen in terms of firearms freedoms.
It also serves as yet another illustration that no matter how much Republicans surrender to the gun-grabbers, it will never be enough. As things stand now, Florida gun owners will have to decide if they still have enough fire in their bellies to turn up at the polls after their utter betrayal by “A+ rated” Rick Scott. That’s compounded by the revelation that incoming Florida Senate President Bill Galvano is now effectively on Bloomberg’s payroll. Then there’s the long list of Florida GOP turncoats and outright liars, who were happy to be represented as “staunch defenders of the Second Amendment” in order to gain power, only to then prove themselves to be the basest of cowards, turning tail and abandoning those who believed in and fought for them.
You wouldn’t tolerate a cheating spouse, would you? Why would you take it from a politician? Maybe we should ask Republican “#gunsense champion” Anitere Flores, who seems to have experience with both kinds of betrayals.
What all this has done is made things incredibly more difficult for the Republican Gillum now holds a slim lead over in a recent poll, Ron DeSantis. True, one poll does not an election call (or even most polls, as 2016 taught us), but it’s indicative of how closely divided the electorate has become, and how the last thing either party can afford to do is betray its base.
While I would argue with him over his (obviously NRA-influenced) support for expanded prior restraint “background checks” and due process-endangering mental health blanket dragnets, DeSantis’ stated position on guns is a hell of a lot better than his turncoat GOP peers. And it’s the polar opposite of Democrat Gillums’, who tweeted something else recently that illustrates a major difference between those who believe the government exists to serve the people and those who insist we exist to serve it.
“Keep saying it loud with me…I believe in a state where healthcare is a right and not a privilege,” Gillum declared. “#bringithome.”
To paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends upon what the meaning of the word “right” is. Gillum clearly embraces the version where they’re what the government “gives” you from property coerced from someone else, and as we all know, what government giveth, it has the power to take away.
For a “health care right” to work, somebody else needs to provide it and pay for it. That means they can be compelled to and punished if they refuse.
There’s a word for that.
Your and my rights aren’t dependent upon putting demands on others (except to demand they leave them the hell alone). They didn’t create our rights and they didn’t bestow them to us, and that holds true whether you believe they are “endowed by our Creator” or simply inherent to the condition of being human.
It figures that collectivist Gillum, supported by the Democratic Socialists of America (whose songs promise “And when the revolution comes, We’ll kill you all with knives and guns”), is determined to strip from us the means to resist those presuming the power to define and bestow our rights or redefine and withhold them.
Florida gun owners: You have a choice to make.
We all do.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner 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.