Gun Rights Advocate Wants More Democrats on Board. What's Standing in the Way?

The Second Amendment belongs to every American, regardless of their political affiliation, and I'd love to see more Democrats standing up for the right to keep and bear arms. But while gun owners come in all political stripes, the same can't be said for the politicians who are trying to restrict our rights. Gun control has become a defining issue for the Democrat Party, and that's a problem that can't be solved simply by encouraging Second Amendment organizations to be less partisan.

Gun rights advocate Rob Pincus believes the firearms community needs to do a better job of reaching out to Democrats, and he's got a point. But as he explained in a recent interview with The Guardian, he also seems to believe that gun-rights groups are largely responsible for the partisan divide over the Second Amendment. I think he's overlooking just how much of that divide is being driven by Democrat politicians and the gun-control organizations that help elect them.

“Leaders in gun rights organizations for the most part don’t believe it’ll ever happen, but a few recognize that because of the shift in voting patterns toward the left, it will be important to work with gun owners who vote Democrat,” said Rob Pincus, executive vice-president of the Second Amendment Organization, a non-profit that advocates for gun rights and offers firearms training.

Pincus has worked in the gun industry for more than 30 years, and for the last 10, he’s been floating the idea that the movement needs to spend less time supporting Republicans – who already support looser gun laws – and instead court Democrats and convince them to remove gun control as a central piece of the party’s agenda.

“This midterm presents an opportunity to take that message, which hasn’t been received well by the loudest voices in the gun community, and take it out for another try,” he said.

I've had my own thoughts along those lines, but there are a couple of issues that The Guardian piece never really acknowledges.

I agree that, ideally, Second Amendment groups should be single issue organizations. But let's also be honest. Gun control groups have seen the same kind of mission creep, if not moreso, over the past few election cycles. Groups like Everytown and Brady have run ads that barely mention gun control and focus more on protecting abortion, for instance. They're courting their base, which is largely comprised of Democrat-leaning women. 

Like it or not, this is part of the political playbook on both sides of the fight over our Second Amendment rights. 

Second Amendment groups also have to be careful not to alienate existing members (and donors) while trying to attract new ones. A group that's traditionally been seen as culturally conservative is going to have a more difficult time engaging in outreach to Democrat gun owners than one that's historically been more small-l libertarian. I know for a fact that some Second Amendment organizations received pushback from some members after they spoke out against the DOJ's aborted effort to go after trans gun owners by arguing they're too mentally ill to own firearms. 

Now, to their credit, none of those groups backed off of their position, but that experience is a reminder not every Second Amendment advocate is a single issue voter or activist. 

As I wrote last week:

I honestly don't know if the NRA is the right vehicle, but I think it would be worth the effort in trying to recruit genuinely pro-Second Amendment liberals to run for office in two years. The Dems are already going to be fractured between more establishment types and the hardcore Democrat Socialists, so I think there's room (and opportunity) for Blue Dog Democrats who don't support gun control, particularly in purplish states or districts. 

Would those candidates face an uphill battle in Democrat primaries? Absolutely. But I also think there are Democrat voters who believe in a much more robust right to keep and bear arms than their party's elected officials are willing to defend (most polls put that number at anywhere between 12 and 20 percent of Democrat voters) Those voters, not to mention the large number of independent voters who can sway many elections, deserve representation too, and right now they really only have one option: vote Republican. 

That might work for single-issue voters whose single issue is the Second Amendment, but that doesn't describe most of the electorate. 

When Pincus says that the movement needs to spend less time supporting Republicans and spend more time courting Democrats to convince them to remove gun control as a central piece of the party’s agenda, I think that gets things a little backwards. I don't think the NRA or GOA is ever going to convince the Democrat leadership to go with them over Everytown or Moms Demand Action. 

Instead, we should be trying to give pro-gun voters on the left candidates that they can support without having to shelve their views on the Second Amendment. Again, I don't know that the NRA is the right vehicle to recruit those candidates. It might be that groups like Pink Pistols, the Liberal Gun Club, A Better Way 2A, National African American Gun Association, or even the Second Amendment Organization are better positioned to find potential candidates and give them an initial boost. 

Let's be honest. Any Democrat who runs in a primary with the backing of the NRA or GOA is going to immediately be targeted by the gun control lobby. That support would be a net negative for any pro-Second Amendment Democrat. I don't think that would automatically be the case for a Pink Pistols-endorsed candidate or one who has the backing of NAAGA. 

Yes, I think gun owners of all kinds should feel welcome at the NRA Annual Meeting or Gun Owners of America's GOALS event. I believe that is the case, at least for the most part. But ensuring that these organizations have a big tent and breaking the gun control lobby's stranglehold on the Democrat Party are two very different things and involve very different strategies.  

The biggest obstacle to winning over Democrat gun owners isn't the NRA's endorsement of Republicans or the cultural conservatism of some Second Amendment activists. It's a Democrat political establishment that increasingly treats support for gun control as a prerequisite for candidates seeking the party's backing. We can welcome every Democrat who walks through the doors of a gun range, but that alone isn't going to change who's writing the party's platform or deciding which candidates get financial support.

I'd love to see a day when the Second Amendment enjoys the kind of bipartisan support it deserves, and I think there are opportunities to make that happen. But it will take more than convincing gun-rights groups to stop playing partisan politics. It will require building a genuine pro-Second Amendment constituency within the Democrat Party that's willing to challenge its own leadership, support candidates who reject gun control, and make politicians pay a political price for attacking our rights. 

That's a big undertaking, but I think it's also a more promising path than simply asking the NRA to be nicer to Democrats and hoping they'll return the favor. The Second Amendment movement doesn't need to convince every Democrat to vote Republican. It needs to make sure Democrats who believe in the right to keep and bear arms have someone worth voting for in their own party when they're handed a ballot.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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