Second Amendment advocate and author David Codrea has prompted a lot of discussion, debate, and disagreement by calling on 2A organizations to get proactive on immigration issues. Codrea argues that immigration, both legal and illegal, benefits Democrats far more than Republicans, and that "[a]dding such new citizens to the voting rolls will result in supermajorities in state and federal legislatures that will then be able to pass all kinds of anti-gun edicts."
Codrea has encouraged gun owners to ask 2A groups "What are you going to do to counter the existential threat both legal and illegal immigration pose to the Second Amendment, and what reforms will you expect politicians you support to champion?”
Yet in two columns at Ammoland, including one posted on Thursday that contains a lengthy response to this Bearing Arms post by contributor Ranjit Singh, Codrea hasn't really explained exactly what he'd like to see from groups like NRA, GOA, SAF, and others.
In Thursday's column, also Codrea responded to SAF's Kostas Moros's pushback by proclaiming, "I offer a plan that requires leadership that you refuse to provide (see my questions for the gun groups)." From what I've seen, though, most of what he's offered have been statements about the existential threat to our Second Amendment rights posed by both legal and illegal immigrants, and open-ended questions about what 2A groups plan to do about it.
In my opinion, the closest thing to a specific policy that Codrea has offered in his two columns comes from his endorsement of this comment from Four Boxes Diner's Mark W. Smith, who said in a recent video:
[W]e really need, for a whole bunch of reasons … to continue to push that most important issue, which is the most important issue when it comes to our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and that is the immigration issue, kicking out the people [who] shouldn’t be here, kicking out the people that may be illegally voting, kicking out the people that have no interest in the right to keep and bear arms.
Even that is fairly vague, at least as far as a call to action for Second Amendment groups. If Codrea wants to see these organizations spend time and resources combatting both legal and illegal immigration, it would be helpful for him to elaborate on what would satisfy him.
So, I'll ask Codrea a similar question to the one he wants gun owners to ask 2A organizations: what reforms do you want politicians (and Second Amendment organizations) to champion? Do you want an outright end to legal immigration? Do you want to pass legislation making it easier to denaturalize U.S. citizens? If so, what criteria would you like to see that would allow for denaturalization?
Another question, asked in good faith: Codrea cites research showing the vast majority of new immigrants end up supporting Democrats (and gun control), but they're not the only part of the Democrat base that's highly motivated to vote for candidates who will attack our Second Amendment rights. Women are far more likely to back gun control than men. Should Second Amendment organizations also join those calling for a repeal of the 19th Amendment and the right of women to vote in federal elections?
In his most recent column, Codrea cited a 2023 story from India Currents headlined “83% Of Indian Americans Say We Need Stricter Gun Laws," and wondered, "who wants to wait another generation to see how many are now with us?"
Well, this 2021 study found 82% of women support "requiring a person to obtain a license from a local law enforcement agency before buying a gun to verify their identity and ensure that they are not legally prohibited from having a gun." 90% of women support "requiring a background check system for all gun sales to ensure a purchaser is not legally prohibited from having a gun." 84% of women support "allowing family members to ask the court to temporarily remove guns from a relative who they believe is at risk of harming himself or others." And 71% of women support "banning the sale of military-style, semiautomatic assault weapons that are capable of shooting more than 10 rounds of ammunition without reloading."
Polls and surveys also show that younger Americans are more inclined to support gun control than older citizens, and they're far more likely to back Democrat candidates as well. Should 2A groups work to repeal the 26th Amendment and replace it with an amendment setting the right to vote at 21 or even older?
I don't mean for these to be gotcha questions. If the threat to our rights is as grave and immediate as Codrea says, so existential that Second Amendment groups need to take an immediate active role in shaping the electorate so that voters are more supportive of our right to keep and bear arms, then why should those effortrs be limited solely to issues of legal and illegal immigrants? Shouldn't we also see women and youth voters as existential threats to our Second Amendment rights as well, given their propensity to vote for anti-gun candidates? And if those groups do indeed pose an existential threat to the right to keep and bear arms, why shouldn't Second Amendment groups be working to counter that threat in the same way Codrea believes 2A groups should be countering the threat of legal and illegal immigrants?
I don't disagree with Codrea's premise that more immigration will lead to more Democrat voters, at least in short term. That seems pretty self-evident. And Codrea is right that some 2A groups, most notably the NRA, have actively fought against things like the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, which isn't directly related to the right to keep and bear arms.
I'd say the difference, though, is that when the NRA was fighting campaign finance "reform," it was doing so on the grounds that those reforms would silence pro-2A organizations and their individual members. If the NRA or any other Second Amendment organization were to actively fight against legal immigration or push for denaturalization and the repeal of the 19th and 26th Amendments, they would be working against the interest of many of those individual members.
It's true that in the aggregate, immigrants, women, and young adults comprise a large portion of the Democrats' base... and the base of support for gun control lobby as well. But Second Amendment groups aren't fighting for the aggregate right to keep and bear arms. Their mission is fundamentally about ensuring the individual right to do so, including those individuals who are part of a demographic group that is broadly opposed to the Second Amendment.
As individuals, we should stand up and advocate for whatever we believe in, so long as we're prepared to suffer the political slings and arrows that may come our way. I take no issue with Codrea or any other individual gun owner stumping for de-naturalization, re-migration, or an end to female suffrage if that's what they want. They absolutely have the right to do so.
An organization should speak for its members, though, and while 100% of the membership of Second Amendment groups support the right to keep and bear arms, that membership is going to become more divided with each additional issue that is introduced. In turn the organization (and the movement) becomes less effective.
Respecting the individual rights, and indeed the individuality of gun owners themselves, may put Second Amendment advocates at a disadvantage to those Democrats who are happy to deny all of us our 2A rights, but I don't think the movement can survive if we adopt their viewpoint and treat individuals as just components of a political body that must be sacrificed for the greater good when we think it's necessary.
I believe our challenge and charge is to grow, not shrink, the Second Amendment community. As Codrea notes, that takes a lot of time and effort, and often the gains seem awfully small for the amount of energy expended. But in the political fight for our Amendment rights, I don't see how we can adopt the strategy of our opponent without surrendering what it is we're actually fighting for.
It's not a fair fight. It never has been. This is asymmetrical political warfare we're engaged in, and we need all the individual fighters we can muster to the cause.
This post has become long enough as it is, so I'll save suggestions on how we can wage that asymmetrical political warfare for another in the near future. The basic building block, though, is recruiting. If we really are facing an all-hands-on-deck crisis for our 2A rights, the last thing we need to do is start pitching people overboard.
Editor’s Note: The radical gun prohibitionists are playing the long game, and will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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