I few years ago I thought the NRA had won the 2A battle nationally and just needed to clean up in the bluest states like CA and NY. But maybe not. This is a shot across the bow for the NRA.
Agreed. It was not that long ago that the Democrats seem to have taken a break on demanding more anti-2A laws. They were still as anti-constitutional as ever, but it wasn’t their #1 issue. See this plaintive Salon piece from 2007: Why Democrats dumped gun control
I’m not sure why. Maybe it was post-9/11 and Americans wanted to up-arm. Maybe #Mediajackals were not as corrupt and tendentious as they are today. Maybe the left was waiting for Bush’s term to expire. Maybe the left was expecting SCOTUS to slap them down hard (by 2007, SCOTUS had granted cert on Heller and I think the DC Circuit had ruled in Heller’s favor at least a year earlier).
But yes, the NRA is badly needed right now. The left is no longer willing to tolerate the NRA. It wants to kill it, bury it, and salt that unholy ground.
One correction in the article, if I may be so bold.
Should Bloomberg win the Presidential election it will be because he calls for reasonable gun safety laws, but once elected, will confiscate your firearms.
Should any Democrat win the Presidential election it will be because he/she calls for reasonable gun safety laws, but once elected, will confiscate your firearms.
The linked article is claiming that the anti-constitutionalists spent $2.5M in Virginia last year, and the NRA spent only $350K. The Democrats got a majority. So therefore the “NRA lost Virginia.”
It seems more likely that the Democrats won Virginia by playing a multi-generational long game. The Democrats’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965 (pitched as a tribute to the late President Kennedy by Sen. Kennedy) was sold as a modest change. LBJ claimed at the signing that: “This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.”
Of course it did. It reversed historic immigration patterns, primarily White immigrants from Europe, while encouraging greater immigration overall. In 1970, Virginia’s population was 80.8% White and 18.6% Black. Other races were negligible: about half of one percent total. (See page 125)
By 2018, according to the Census Bureau’s current estimates, the state’s population of Black residents stayed about the same, at 19.9%. But the population of White non-Hispanic residents is now only 61.5%. The rest is now mostly Hispanic and Asian. The Hispanic population roughly doubled from 2000 to 2010 alone. The percentage of foreign born residents is in the double digits.
Survey after survey shows that immigrants are disproportionately big-government liberals. As one overview of the data concluded, “solid and persistent majorities of Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their children share the policy preferences of the modern American Left.” As a result, as University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel has demonstrated, in the nation’s largest counties (which are where immigrants tend to settle), “Republicans have lost 0.58 percentage points in presidential elections for every one percentage-point increase in the size of the local immigrant population.”
The Democrats’ 1965 plan won. It just took a while. California will be an example for the nation.
PS: Maybe the NRA should have spent more. On the other hand the state Republican Party failed to run candidates in some Virginia Senate races. Among the current Democrat state senators elected without a Republican on the ballot: L. Louise Lucas, R. Creigh Deeds, Jeremy S. McPike, Adam P. Ebbin, Barbara A. Favola, J. C. “Chap” Petersen, Richard L. “Dick” Saslaw, Scott A. Surovell, Dave W. Marsden. And that’s just in the state Senate!
Let’s blame the NRA for not getting its own house in order. They have lots of explaining to do. But it doesn’t seem fair to blame them for “losing Virginia” when the Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to field candidates.
I few years ago I thought the NRA had won the 2A battle nationally and just needed to clean up in the bluest states like CA and NY. But maybe not. This is a shot across the bow for the NRA.
Agreed. It was not that long ago that the Democrats seem to have taken a break on demanding more anti-2A laws. They were still as anti-constitutional as ever, but it wasn’t their #1 issue. See this plaintive Salon piece from 2007: Why Democrats dumped gun control
I’m not sure why. Maybe it was post-9/11 and Americans wanted to up-arm. Maybe #Mediajackals were not as corrupt and tendentious as they are today. Maybe the left was waiting for Bush’s term to expire. Maybe the left was expecting SCOTUS to slap them down hard (by 2007, SCOTUS had granted cert on Heller and I think the DC Circuit had ruled in Heller’s favor at least a year earlier).
But yes, the NRA is badly needed right now. The left is no longer willing to tolerate the NRA. It wants to kill it, bury it, and salt that unholy ground.
One correction in the article, if I may be so bold.
Should any Democrat win the Presidential election it will be because he/she calls for reasonable gun safety laws, but once elected, will confiscate your firearms.
The linked article is claiming that the anti-constitutionalists spent $2.5M in Virginia last year, and the NRA spent only $350K. The Democrats got a majority. So therefore the “NRA lost Virginia.”
It seems more likely that the Democrats won Virginia by playing a multi-generational long game. The Democrats’ Hart-Celler Act of 1965 (pitched as a tribute to the late President Kennedy by Sen. Kennedy) was sold as a modest change. LBJ claimed at the signing that: “This bill we sign today is not a revolutionary bill. It does not affect the lives of millions. It will not restructure the shape of our daily lives.”
Of course it did. It reversed historic immigration patterns, primarily White immigrants from Europe, while encouraging greater immigration overall. In 1970, Virginia’s population was 80.8% White and 18.6% Black. Other races were negligible: about half of one percent total. (See page 125)
By 2018, according to the Census Bureau’s current estimates, the state’s population of Black residents stayed about the same, at 19.9%. But the population of White non-Hispanic residents is now only 61.5%. The rest is now mostly Hispanic and Asian. The Hispanic population roughly doubled from 2000 to 2010 alone. The percentage of foreign born residents is in the double digits.
From a 2018 National Review article:
The Democrats’ 1965 plan won. It just took a while. California will be an example for the nation.
PS: Maybe the NRA should have spent more. On the other hand the state Republican Party failed to run candidates in some Virginia Senate races. Among the current Democrat state senators elected without a Republican on the ballot: L. Louise Lucas, R. Creigh Deeds, Jeremy S. McPike, Adam P. Ebbin, Barbara A. Favola, J. C. “Chap” Petersen, Richard L. “Dick” Saslaw, Scott A. Surovell, Dave W. Marsden. And that’s just in the state Senate!
Let’s blame the NRA for not getting its own house in order. They have lots of explaining to do. But it doesn’t seem fair to blame them for “losing Virginia” when the Republicans couldn’t even be bothered to field candidates.