As I promised at the end of my post on whether Second Amendment groups should be actively devoting limited time and resources to fight against both legal and illegal immigration (and perhaps even women and younger voters), I've got some ideas about how to grow the number of 2A activists (and gun owners in general) instead of trying to deport or disenfranchise members of a particular demographic who are most likely to support anti-gun candidates and policies.
We can start by targeting our efforts on those individuals who are already gun owners but not yet Second Amendment advocates and activists. When we learn what's keeping them from getting involved or financially contributing to 2A organizations, 2A groups can develop targeted approaches to addressing their concerns and giving them a reason to join. There are obviously too many gun owners out there who simply buy into the anti-gun rhetoric from the gun control lobby, even its against their own self-interest, but I suspect there are a fair number who aren't involved because they don't think they'd be welcomed, don't believe these groups are working hard enough to protect the right to keep and bear arms, and/or don't think their individual support will make a difference.
My guess is that self-described liberals aren't hugely represented among gun owners who are not politically involved, so much of that outreach would be directed at conservatives and independents. We cannot ignore those individuals. In fact, they're probably the lowest-hanging fruit.
But we also need to work towards growing the number of pro-gun liberals and progressives... and just as importantly, helping to give them candidates who respect their Second Amendment rights that they can actually vote for. There's plenty of evidence that millions of Americans who are more likely to vote Democrat have become gun owners since the pandemic, but these individuals are likely to keep voting for anti-gun politicians because they're not single issue voters and they're not conservative.
In 2010, 25% of House Democrats were "A" rated by the NRA. By 2020, there was just a single Democrat in the House to earn that grade. That didn't happen by accident. It was certainly helped by the Democrats lurching leftward on every issue, but give the gun control lobby some credit for taking advantage of that environment. Groups like Moms Demand Action started grooming volunteers and activists for public office around that same time, and have worked extensively to turn their supporters into campaign volunteers as well as candidates.
Second Amendment organizations have put in a lot of work on the get-out-the-vote side of things, but institutionally speaking, they've done next to nothing to identify and encourage members of the 2A community to run for office, and the few that have taken that step have run as Republicans in pretty safe red seats or deep blue districts where there's really no expectation of victory.
A moonshot goal of the 2A community (including advocacy organizations) would be that by 2036, we once again have 25% of House Democrats supportive of the right to keep and bear arms ; not in words, but in deeds.
I recognize that, given the deep partisan divides we have, any Second Amendment group that starts doling out campaign cash to Democratic candidates, no matter how supportive they are on the issue, is going to generate substantial pushback and objections from donors. I our goal is to grow and not shrink the movement, then we need to keep those folks in mind too, even as we work to chip away at the gun control lobby's base of support.
And this will require chipping away in strategic locations instead of a full-frontal assault. For starters, I'd look for the ten congressional districts that are most likely to elect a "moderate" Democrat, and then look within that district's 2A community to find Democrats or (more likely) independents rats who are willing and able to run a campaign, with an independent PAC set up to support these candidates.
At the same time, Second Amendment groups should be engaged in the same kind of in-house candidate recruitment that we've seen from groups like Moms Demand Action, Everytown, and Giffords; efforts aimed at boosting both Republican and Democrat candidates, and for offices large and small.
If the 20% to 25% of Democrats who identify as pro-gun actually have a pro-gun candidate to vote for in a Democratic primary, my guess is that the vast majority of them are going to do so. And while gun control is a big issue for many rank-and-file Democrats, there are enough who are apathetic or agnostic on the issue that if a pro-2A Democrat wins their support based on other issues near and dear to their hearts, it's possible for that pro-2A Democrat to win a primary; probably not in Queens or Manhattan, but in places like NC-01 and WA-08.
The Second Amendment community has ceded one political party to our ideological opponents, while the gun control lobby is still actively working to peel away Republicans from their support for the Second Amendment and are happy to back those who do so, like Pennsylvania Republican Brian Fitzpatrick. At a time when party approval for both Democrats and Republicans are in the toilet and the largest group of voters are unaffiliated, it doesn't make any sense to me that we're not working to ensure that in as many districts as possible voters are picking between two candidates who are good on 2A issues.
We can also increase the number of gun owners through efforts that are explicitly non-partisan, and even non-political in nature. The Diversity Shoot program run by Tony Simon is a great example of providing a welcoming environment for the gun-curious where they can dispel their fears and learn just how fun shooting can be. The more gun owners there are across the political spectrum, the more 2A advocates, activists, and candidates we'll have on the left, right, and middle as well.
These steps don't require any conservative to vote for a Democrat, or even financially support a Democratic campaign. It's not about infiltrating the Democrat party and secretly running pro-gun Republican plants. It's about getting existing gun owners to become politically active, as well as helping to grow the relatively small number of pro-2A Democrats and to give them a candidate they can actually vote for.
This wouldn't be easy, and it would be difficult to make it quick. In all honesty, we should have started these efforts 15 or 20 years ago when the gun control lobby started taking aim at Blue Dog Democrats. But as they say, if the best time to start a project is yesterday, then the next best time to do it is today.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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