Anti-gunners love to distort facts. In fairness, they’re far from the only ones who do it, but anti-gun leftists are especially fond of this tactic. Personally, I think they’re so good at it that they do it on a subconscious level, never realizing they’re knee-deep in a delusion.
A prime example comes from Forward. It seems that Nikki Fried’s win as Agriculture Secretary in Florida is proof of pro-gun control swing.
Yes, they’re still pushing that line.
Florida has an improbable new “farmer-in-chief,” a 40-year-old Miami-raised Jewish lawyer.
Nicole “Nikki” Fried, who will become the state’s Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, won her first political race just as improbably: by picking a fight with the National Rifle Association and its iconic state lobbyist — a 79-year-old grandma who carries a gun in her pocketbook. And as she takes office, Fried shows no signs of letting up on the NRA.
In the days leading up to the November 6 midterm election, Fried’s race was overshadowed by the effort of Democrat Andrew Gillum, the dynamic young African-American mayor of Tallahassee, to become governor; and U.S. Senator Bill Nelson’s attempt to hold his seat for the Democrats.
Both lost, while Fried narrowly won her race to head the state’s Agriculture Commission, which, in one of those Florida quirks, happens to be the agency that oversees concealed-carry gun permits. She became the first Democrat in 12 years to win a state office. And, to the surprise of many, she did it in part by taking on the state’s powerful gun lobby.
It’s almost impossible to pinpoint exactly what tipped the balance in her favor. It may have helped that she is Jewish, and a woman. But her unprecedented decision to confront the NRA head-on is “the most intriguing issue to look at,” said Donald Davison, a political scientist at Rollins College in Winter Park.
Now, I’m going to be upfront and admit that Fried’s winning wasn’t the finest moment for the pro-gun side.
Yet, as Forward noted, other Democrats lost. Gillium was staunchly anti-gun as well, more vocally so that Fried, at least so far as those of us outside of Florida could tell.
In literally every other statewide race, the Democrats were defeated despite tensions still being somewhat high after the Parkland massacre earlier this year.
The truth is that Fried’s win may have had more to do with any number of other factors, including the mismanagement over the Florida concealed carry permit program under GOP Agriculture Secretary Adam Putnam. Let’s also not ignore that her opponent, Matt Caldwell, managed to even annoy the National Rifle Association, the very group Fried is being heralded for taking on.
In other words, her win was likely the result of a combination of factors which had little to do with her stance on the NRA.
That should be clear. After all, the same voters who put her in office also put Ron DeSantis in as governor and voted for Republicans in the rest of the statewide races.
So why claim otherwise? The reason is simple. Politics is a game where everyone wants to back a winner and no one wants to back a loser. That goes for issues, too.
For example, there are actually groups still fighting to reinstitute Prohibition. Why don’t you hear about them? Because they have no support. This despite sizeable swaths of the public actually being against drinking to some degree. It’s a loser position and everyone knows it, so no one wants to back it.
Politicians can have a lot of people listening to them and nodding their heads, but people don’t support their campaigns because they don’t have a prayer in winning.
Because of this fact, it’s imperative that the gun control narrative be one of achieving victories. They have to do it even if they got their butts kicked. They have to spin loses into moral wins or else start to lose financial and political support. They know it as well as anyone, so their allies in the media help by holding up Nikki Fried’s win as proof that the worm has turned on gun control, all while barely even mentioning Andrew Gillum’s anti-gun rhetoric and how that didn’t result in a win for the former Tallahassee Mayor.
They ignore inconvenient facts or barely acknowledge them, all while spouting utter nonsense to the faithful.
They’ll do anything to make it look like they’re winning, even if they’re not.
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