Every morning I receive an email from Chris Cox, warning me about the Armageddon facing gun owners if Hillary is elected. He also asks for dough. When I say 'every morning' I mean every morning, okay? Of course the truth is that Hillary has absolutely no intention of taking away all the guns because even if she wanted to, she can't. There's something out there called the 2nd Amendment and running a few diplomatic emails through a private server is one thing, violating the Constitution is something else.
Does it bother me that the increasingly shrill appeals for money by the NRA contain statements that simply aren't true? Not really. After all, when you're selling something that people don't need, you do what you gotta do. What does bother me is the degree to which NRA emails and messaging aren't matched by the other side. And you would think that since the Gun Violence Prevention movement (or what we call 'GVP') finally has someone running for president who is talking loudly and continuously about the need to end gun violence, this would be enough of a reason to ramp things up and start responding to the NRA in kind. But I received no less than four emails today from national and state-level GVP groups and none of them mentioned the election at all.
I'm going to take a page from the NRA communications playbook and tell you what will happen if the Hill stays Republican and a certain New York City landlord is sitting in the Oval Office in 2017. And this list isn't based on some delusional fantasy that the NRA creates again and again to keep its members all riled up. These things will happen and the only reason they haven't happened yet is because there's a guy named Obama still hanging around. Ready?
- A national, 50-state concealed-carry license will be law of the land;
- The ATF will no longer be able to prevent surplus military weapons from being imported from overseas;
- The ban on CDC-funded gun research will be made permanent rather than having to be voted as a budget amendment every year;
- Obama's attempt to kick-start "smart gun" research will be dead before it arrives.
Leaving aside these specific issues for a moment, a Trump win in November foreshadows a much deeper and more profound problem for Team GVP, namely, the fact that he has openly embraced a culture of violence which will only strengthen the notion that we should all be walking around with guns. When Trump tells a rally that he'd like to punch a protestor in the face, when he says that his supporters would follow him even if he shot someone dead in the street, he's not just pandering to the basest and most fearsome emotions we all sometimes feel; he's telling America that violence is an approved way for individuals to interact. And what's the most efficient way to express violence? A gun.
Talking about using a gun, we now have a presidential candidate who is willing to make gun violence a focal point of her campaign. And yet for reasons that I don't understand, my friends in GVP-land seem unwilling or unable to sit down and come up with an organized plan that will begin to focus everyone's attention and energies on the task that lies ahead. And the task is very simply -- Trump has to be stopped. And I don't think that such a discussion and such planning involving all the GVP constituencies has to wait until the Democratic primary campaign comes to an end.
Because the truth is that whether it's Hillary or Bernie, the opposition and the threat isn't going to change. So getting everyone together, sharing resources, reaching out to every last person who has ever expressed the slightest interest in any kind of GVP activity is something that should start today. Not tomorrow -- today. And don't think that you won't hear this from me again.