Are the republicans the only choice?

Vamo, whatever manages to get blocked in the next four years will mean zip if Hillary wins and the Democrats get control of the Senate. Progressive Supreme Court justices will be rubber stamped and effect us decades after Hillary is gone. You don't have to rewrite the Constitution if you can simply have your people reinterpret it to your liking.

Which is why I remind people who can't stand the top of the ticket to please still show up and vote for senators, congressmen, and state government officials. I find Trump unacceptable for so many reasons that go beyond what is up for discussion on this forum, he will never have my vote.

Look over on that ridge. That Ragged and Soiled army is growing every day. Can you see their flag?

Past several elections I would sneak about at midnight and among the candidate signs leading to the polling place I would place my homemade sign "Why Vote the Lesser Evil? Vote Pure Evill! Vote Cthulhu!" with a repro of my 1969 pen'n'ink of the demon god Cthulhu on its throne.

There are local Rep and Dem candidates worth supporting, but, man. every election the national Rep and Dem parties move further and further out there. Donald and Hillary are the best they could do?

Who is the lesser evil? I did not like how Hillary typified the D.C. law overturned by Heller '08 in the debate (unless you count a total ban on handguns as merely reasonable regulation to protect toddlers), or the Clinton campaign spinning Trump's remarks about "Second Amendment people" (which I took to be a reference to the activists behind Heller and McDonald) into "Second Amendment solutions" (ehich I take as watering the tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots), or the Clinton campaign representing Pepe the Frog as a neonazi only reference. For ten years Pepe has been a middle finger to the establishment symbol for everyone. Hmm. Like Trump to DNC and RNC. Who do I dislike the least in this election? In 1999 the editor of Harpers magazine pointed out that the AWB allowed the Clintons to pay lip service to the cause of gun control while doing little and accused them of playing both sides of the fence.

Know your individual candidates and where they stand and do not look at R or D after their name as proving anything, especially local candidates. Nationally ... when has either party ran a candidate you could support or believe they honestly supported you?

Unfortunately, this election is who do I dislike the least and trust the least. It reminds me of HG Wells in his "The New World Order" 1940.

There is no 2020.
If the hildabeast wins it is all over. They will flood the country with 3rd world immigrants and there will never be another chance of Americans outnumbering their enemies.
If trump loses, even if he puts up a good resistance, the neocon and rino congressmen will fold and give the Dems everthing they want.

At the state/local level and for federal legislators, it's about a 95% chance your local Republicans are more pro-gun than your Democrats (in 4% of the remainder, both are both equally pro-gun, 1% a very rare scenario when a Fuddy old Republican is actually more anti-gun than an upstart Democrat). There's also those races where the pro-gun candidate is a hopeless long shot, or essentially indistinguishable from the anti-gun candidates.

At the presidential level, the choice is easy; there is no choice. Neither candidate is particularly pro-gun in any way that matters, both are actively proposing additional restrictions of varying severity. Both support or have recently supported the same sorts of restrictions, regardless their current positions. Neither has any kind of coherent understanding of gun rights issues (see sig line for a particular gem from the last debate, in response to a claim Heller was about child-safety). Didn't have to end up this way, but populism is a symptom of a people not thinking clearly, so in retrospect it's no surprise we collectively acted counter-productively. Taking an even longer view of history, we basically haven't had a pro-gun president since before the Great Depression, so it's a bit silly to think our 'salvation' would come at the hands of *any* chief executive; barking up the wrong tree.

To a certain extent, the same can be said of the Supreme Court, which has proven itself incapable of single-handedly protecting our rights, whether or not they are 'friendly' to us (Heller and McDonald have proven to be almost unassailably brilliant opinions with a few glaring but self-defeating flaws, and have been promptly ignored or refuted outright by nearly every single case where their precedent should be applicable). Between the decline of respect for SCOTUS by lower courts, and the decline of respect for SCOTUS by everyone else paying attention due to numerous very poorly reasoned opinions over the last decade (at an accelerating pace), they are rapidly losing the moral/legal authority to settle contentious issues like these one way or the other (a disturbing trend reminiscent of the Dred Scott v Sandford slavery decision, which heralded the American Civil War). Once again, it didn't have to be this way, but as with the presidential primaries, numerous blunders and missed opportunities delivered us to our current situation.

Luckily, the state/local races are the most immediately important ones and the most easily won/influenced by any given gun owner, in light of how poorly federal gun control efforts have fared of late (that said, if the Senate flips decisively we'll be in for a ride, but that's a constant threat). For the average gun owner, the primary threat to what you have *now* is from your own state legislators passing AWBs. Assuming things tend toward the middle as opposed to the worst or best possible outcome, we'll have divided government for the foreseeable future, and it won't matter all that much who is in the Big Chair. There will still be pro-gun voices able to filibuster opponents (ironically, ones that will receive a lot of undue blame in a few weeks)

Now, the difference in who gets elected to prez and legislature (and eventually appointed to SCOTUS) matters greatly, but only in the long run, and our side has clearly ceded our field position as far as our long term strategy; it's out of our hands for the time being because of our poor choices. Even if this election was a landslide for gun rights (it easily could have been had primary voters been thinking rationally & had the Republican party sought to defend itself from viral insurgents as well as the Democratic party does) it would be nearly a decade before we'd see any rewards, so the reverse is likely true now that this is no longer a reasonable possibility. If bad SCOTUS picks get on the bench, it will still be years, and multiple election cycles before they bear their poison fruit. Plenty of time for our side to take defensive measures ***IF*** we can manage to learn the correct lesson for once, and nominate leaders with a coherent understanding of the issues, and realistic goals to be attained. Only this way can we pivot from a defensive, reactionary stance that favors obstruction & protest (congress' resistance of gun control bills & Trump) to an offensive stance where gun laws are over/re-written or repealed outright. This has always been the Democrats' strength, and the Republicans' weakness, however (largely stemming from the reality that Republicans can't as easily bribe the majority of their diverse groups of supporters into common-cause they way Democrats can with spending bills)

We have no reason to fear a rapid slide into despotism, at least not on this particular issue, yet. There is simply too much money involved among too many voters for confiscatory policies at this time, too many oxen to be gored. Disobedience would be rampant, and crackdowns would likely result in a significant level of civil unrest or assassinations (which would self-reinforce the crackdown and rapidly pull us into despotism, accompanied by ever-increasing resistance factions). Our side has made huge sustained gains since the AWB expired, and it will take easily a decade for the anti's to gradually undo this through incremental measures (assuming their base of billionaire support doesn't die with Hillary and the rest of her generation, which are all pushing seventy years or more at this point)

Long/short; vote for who you want for president, or nobody. It really won't amount to a hill of beans in any foreseeable timespan, since much larger forces dictate our fate, and the presidency is a poor tool for *us* in any case. But for your local and state elections, and congressional representatives, your vote is far more significant in its ability to direct the course of events in the near future (and to a lesser extent, longer term). If you are in a swing state and it will bother you for it to go blue, vote red, but don't hold any illusions it's of any ultimate significance for gun rights compared to the down-ballot races, and for those races, realize it's pretty much guaranteed the red party will do better for us than the blue one.

TCB

"There is no 2020."
If people really believed this, I'd have thought they'd have taken more drastic measures to prevent such calamity. Instead we 'rolled the bones' with a long-shot new comer we did not understand, over numerous predictable paths to victory with favorable odds, because we let ourselves be so blinded by our own fear that we forgot what we wanted to win and let our opponents dictate our course of action.

We came out of the 'lightning round' on the gameshow with a half-dozen reasonably presentable, well-liked, and popular candidates against literally the worst Democrat offering since McGovern (if not ever), a house with the most (R)'s since the roaring twenties, and a (R) senate that was finally twitching back to life after six years of Reid's intransigence, and an unprecedentedly strong pro-gun political presence fresh off of decisive hard defensive victories at the national level...and we decide to trade all that hard work for a chance at the "Mystery Box" prize. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks if we even get the Mystery Box, let alone whether we ultimately like what's inside.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No one believes there is no recourse yet, and we should all thank heaven for it.

TCB

barnbwt said:

"There is no 2020."
We came out of the 'lightning round' on the gameshow with a half-dozen reasonably presentable, well-liked, and popular candidates against literally the worst Democrat offering since McGovern (if not ever), a house with the most (R)'s since the roaring twenties, and a (R) senate that was finally twitching back to life after six years of Reid's intransigence, and an unprecedentedly strong pro-gun political presence fresh off of decisive hard defensive victories at the national level...and we decide to trade all that hard work for a chance at the "Mystery Box" prize. I guess we'll find out in a few weeks if we even get the Mystery Box, let alone whether we ultimately like what's inside.

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My thoughts exactly. This election should have been easy for the Republicans but they went and picked the only candidate even more unpopular than Hillary Clinton. I do not trust Trump to hold any position he has stated on guns or any other topic and I cannot in good conscience vote for the man. We have the House to check Clinton and the Senate and Supreme Court Justices retire periodically. (The 4 oldest Justices are evenly split D and R so despite all the hoopla it is unlikely that the court balance goes more than one vote either way)

I am resigned to a President Clinton and 4 years of continued disfunction. No gun legislation will pass in those 4 years. One small blessing is that both candidates are of such advanced age that we aren't likely to be stuck with either for 8 years. We will see who each party brings in 2020.

climbnjump said:

While I believe that the Libertarian "platform" is safer on the 2A, I'm not sure that is true for the two running this time around. Here is what the VP candidate had to say during one interview:

“The five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle; the problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon, and those are independent criminal offenses,” Weld said. “That is when they become– essentially– a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns probably is even worse than the problem of the AR15.”
​

In other interviews, he makes a differentiation between guns that have a hunting purpose and guns that don't and basically implies that the 2A only protects the "right to hunt".

I realize that it is mostly pointless to bring this up since Mr. Johnson and Mr. Weld have no chance of making it to the White House, still, it never hurts to know who believes what.

ETA:
Here is a video of Mr. Weld actually saying what I quoted above. It's actually pretty hard to believe that someone who has served as a governor of a state can actually be so ignorant.

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Very true.
And Trump was for the assault weapons ban before he was against it.

What these people are saying to us is not reflective of what they believe.
They are saying what they think their voting base wants to hear.

God only knows what they really believe.

OP, I certainly understand your reservations. I have them, too. That being said, a vote for anyone but Trump is a vote for Clinton. It's really that simple.

"Once freedom is lost, only blood—human blood—will win it back."
I personally believe that both major candidates pose equal risk to our freedoms, though they obviously each threaten different freedoms. I am not a single issue voter, and I believe losing any freedom is bad and will eventually lead to losing the rest, regardless of whether the right to bear arms is the first freedom you lose, or the last.
Even if I were a single issue voter, and the 2nd Amendment was that single issue, I don't honestly believe we are any better off with Trump than with Hillary. Trump portrays the image he wants to portray, and right now, that is pro- (or at least neutral) 2A. That doesn't mean he is. I don't think Trump is that revolver half empty. I think it, at best, has one chamber empty, but probably is equal with Hillary.
I think they both see the world in terms of important people and serfs, and we are all the serfs. They are just arguing about who holds the end of the chain.
But, that is somewhat easier for me to say than others, since I live in Idaho, which is about as far from a swing state as you can get, so my vote in an election to a federal government seat really doesn't matter (OK, yes, there is that small, small chance that enough people in Idaho feel the same way as I do that Idaho will go 3rd party and somehow that will cause Trump to loose. I am OK with that, because 1. they are both evil and 2. I am playing the long game.) Where I vote on the state and local races though...that matters.
Whatever you choose, make sure you will be able to live with yourself in the morning.
If this is considered too off-topic, I apologize, but it is the way I see things, and I felt it should be said.

Nicky Santoro said:

OP, I certainly understand your reservations. I have them, too. That being said, a vote for anyone but Trump is a vote for Clinton. It's really that simple.

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What if you were going to vote Democrat but you decide you don't want to vote for Hillary so you vote for a 3rd party.
Are you still voting for Clinton?

Also, if I drink a Dr. Pepper, am I really drinking Coke since its not Pepsi?

I suspect it would be easier for Hillary to get away with blatantly bad acts than it would be for Donald to get away with blatantly bad acts.

For the record one relative hates Donald and another supports Hillary but still has a My President is Charlton Heston bumper sticker -- she believes NRA can neuter any gun control drives by the Clintons. I'm still looking at it as lesser of two evils.

JohnKSa said:

If she doesn't know the answer you can remind her that it was in the 1990s before Clinton stopped the import of Chinese small arms and ammunition via executive action.

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Or the 1980s when Bush banned all the imported non-sporting rifles.

JohnKSa said:

It is true that in 1989 Bush banned the import of some, though obviously not "all" non-sporting rifles.

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Which imported non-sporting rifles weren't banned from import in '89?

JohnKSa said:

Well, for starters, how about these that were banned from import 11 years later by Clinton.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/06/us/clinton-to-impose-a-ban-on-58-types-of-imported-guns.html

APRIL 6, 1998

The Clinton Administration plans to announce on Monday that it will permanently ban imports of 58 types of military-style assault weapons, blocking the entry of more than a million high-powered guns into the United States, White House officials said today.​

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"The rifles had been banned by the Bush Administration in 1989 and again under Mr. Clinton's assault weapons ban of 1994. But foreign manufacturers modified the weapons slightly to avoid the ban and applied for hundreds of thousands of import permits before Mr. Clinton imposed a temporary ban in November, pending the 120-day review."

In 1989 Bush banned guns with non-sporting features - pistol grips and flashhiders. That's when the threaded barrels went away and thumbhole stocks came about. For maybe 8 months you could remove the pinned muzzle thingy and thumbhole stock and put regular furniture back on, but they stopped that with a law in 1990 that made doing so "making a banned foreign rifle". Think HK SR9, MAK-90.

The 1998 ban was on thumbhole sporters, because they could still accept hi-cap mags. So these were "sporting rifles", until they suddenly weren't. From then on they could have no non-sporting features, plus they could only accept 10 round or less mags. Think HK SL8, Saiga.

So the last imported non-sporting rifle was 1989, and then the definition of non-sporting got wider in 1998. But Bush definitely banned all non-sporting rifle imports back in '89.


An SKS is still importable - just not from China. Just like those Norinco 1911s. The Chinese then banned US beef imports.

I think we should cast our votes while holding our noses this time if 2A is what we hold dearest. That being said has anyone heard anything about Pence? What does his record show? Personally I dont think Trump will hold serve very long. All the D.C. Cronies hate him so Im thinking blind eyes see nothing.

Carl N. Brown said:

I suspect it would be easier for Hillary to get away with blatantly bad acts than it would be for Donald to get away with blatantly bad acts.

.

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I agree.

I look at Trump as a loud mouth blow hard. We all have known one and we all have learned how to deal with them.

I look at Hillary as kool-aid serving liar.

Since the OP brought up that he is African American, I'd like to point oit that many minority groups, including the ACLU specifically blame the Clinton policies for the disproportionate incarceration rates.

JohnKSa said:

Obviously this makes no sense as there were later bans on "non-sporting" rifles not covered by the original ban. Bush's ban covered rifles with some very specific cosmetic details, not "all non-sporting" rifles.

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Let's put it this way, the government has banned the import of every rifle they defined as "non-sporting" at the time. Fixed mag rifles are considered "sporting", currently, so SKS are not banned from import. If you feel they aren't sporting rifles, you can certainly write the ATF a letter and maybe they'll ban fixed mag rifles, too.

Tomorrow, the government could declare bolt action rifles "non-sporting" and ban all the Tikkas and Sakos. But today they are sporting rifles, just as the SR9 was once a sporting rifle. When they ban the import of these "bolt action sniper rifles" as non-sporting, are you going to decide bolt action rifles were never sporting? Because that's all that's happening - the govt is changing the definition of a sporting rifle.

In 1989, there were no SR9s or MAK90s. Those rifles were newly created specifically to meet the criteria of "sporting rifles" at the time. Taking the government's point of view that they weren't sporting rifles when that was the only reason for their creation is a bit strange. The '89 ban stopped every rifle that was considered non-sporting at the time. There were no rifles that met that '89 definition that got through after '89.