While some on the right are having second thoughts about their support for Donald Trump (assuming they were ever behind him at all), the NRA isn’t amongst ’em. Chris Cox is out with an essay at cnn.com explaining why the alternative would be a gun rights disaster.

Today, somewhere in America, Hillary Clinton will likely fly on a private jet under the watchful eye of armed security. For the last 30 years, Clinton has enjoyed the safety that comes with her armed security detail.

She has never had to worry about being alone in her home in an emergency situation. Unlike most Americans, she does not have to think about dialing 911 if she hears the glass break downstairs at 2 o’clock in the morning. And she never has to wait the national average of 11 minutes from the time she calls for help to the time the police arrive.

Despite that reality, she doesn’t believe you and I have the individual right to keep firearms in our homes to protect ourselves and our families. So where does that leave us? It leaves us with Clinton’s vision for America — one set of rules for her and a different set for the rest of us.

And given that she’ll have anywhere from two to four likely Supreme Court vacancies to fill in the next four to eight years, a Hillary presidency isn’t something gun rights supporters want to contemplate.

Plenty of Americans are having difficulty weighing their options this election season. Some have decided to check out altogether. We’ve apparently moved from the usual predicament of choosing between the the lesser of two evils to having to identify the evil of two lessers…and then voting the other way. Cox, the NRA, and those who vote their gun rights first and foremost seem to have decided that the choice is easy…they’d rather go with the devil they don’t know than the one they do.

The American people overwhelmingly believe the choice to own a firearm for self-defense is theirs to make. It doesn’t belong to the government. It is an individual freedom. So it is too important, too fundamental, to be subject to one set of rules for elites like Clinton and a different set for the rest of us.

Is that your calculation, too?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

112 COMMENTS

    • I would hope that his disdain for current and upcoming trade agreements means that he’s rather replace then with actual free trade. Crony capitalism and protectionism (both in the current agreements and the latter appears to be in his plans) are both counter productive. The negatives of less expensive products from abroad are more concentrated but of less magnitude than the positives, for instance.

      • That’s another thing largely ignored. As important as gun rights are, this election will have a wide impact. CrookedHillary will go all out. Expansion of Obamacare, free college tuition, crushing small business, welfare expansion, open borders…

        • I get the feeling your are right. The left have been at this for 100+ years, and they seem to finally feel confident enough to start dropping the mask. All too often, they no longer even pretend to be American. They are gearing up for endgame. If Hilary gets elected, they will make the final push toward collectivist authoritarianism and all that entails.

          I don’t know if Trump is the one to stop it (assuming it can be stopped at this point), but he’s the best hope we have at this point. If Trump fails, I fear the window of opportunity to defeat the communist totalitarians via political means will have passed.

        • >free college tuition
          That’s just a lie to draw in Berners. If she actually did anything regarding college tuition it would be expanding the loan-debt scheme and making SocJus courses mandatory for everyone.

      • Free trade is retarded when trading with a country waging deliberate economic warfare against you.

        • Not to mention “free” trade is really difficult when we have many more regulations than countries we trade with.

        • There was an interview with one of the PLA Generals who acknowledged the same – I wish I could remember the source or his name.

        • Dumping and other methods of economic warfare are rarely beneficial to the prosecutor, especially in a large world market. It may benefit a few industry big wigs if they are subsidized by their government, but it undermines the national economy as a whole. Simply selling products for less than your customer can produce them is also not economic warfare and actually benefits both parties. Look up ‘comparative advantage’ if you don’t know what it is.

        • 16V – You do realize that PLA generals are not reliable dispensers of good economic advice.

        • Tell that to the CCP. You do realize that dumping is just one of the strings in their bow? Right?

          The Chinese have been waging organized economic warfare against the US since the 90s. They have stolen trillions of dollars of IP and have destroyed trillions of dollars worth of US companies through their tactics.

          Let’s take the solar industry as an example. The Chinese deliberately dumped solar cells onto the world market at cut rate prices using stolen US IP so that they could drive most European and American manufacturers’ out of business. Now, they more or less OWN the solar market.

          If you think the Chinese are somehow not organizing this shit deliberately, you’re a fucking retard.

        • Free trade is fantastic. It allows consumers to get the most for their money. Socialist trade effectively forces the consumers to spend more for similar products, or buy inferior products.
          Countries that trade freely don’t go to war, because they can’t afford it. Instead they become friendly and cooperative.

          Free-ish trade turned the US into the economic powerhouse it once was. Protective tariffs helped lead to WWI and the Great Depression. For the pinnacle of socialist trade, just look at the economic powerhouse that was the USSR: food shortages, inferior manufactured goods…that sounds like a great future.

        • ActionPhysicalMan, I’m not sure how the Chinese wouldn’t win. They steal the one asset we have left, our IP, we have no recourse. They currently have been caught installing back doors into cell phones and laptops. They come to the US and are allowed to buy Legendary Entertainment to control production of movies making them look good, and AMC theaters to control distribution – we can’t open a hot dog cart there without a partner. Their army is a hundreds of millions of people who work for a fraction of what would support a US/EU worker.

          As to the Chinese General, he was a mouthpiece from some bureau, so take it with a huge grain of salt. But the actual evidence is very, very clear that this is what is taking place. From a building with no address full of thousands of hackers, to daily incursions into US systems, to hardware back doors into apparently anything they can, the CCP knows it cannot defeat us militarily (yet) but they do have things we don’t – long term vision, and the ability to execute a 20 year plan. The CCP and PLA are fully involved in all the theft and hacking – that’s war.

          The Chinese have no plan to be number two in the world, or allow Western Culture to dominate.

    • Yup… There is not a single piece of the Trump platform that I don’t like.
      So does that mean you think the government has the right to invade our privacy whenever it chooses, without probable cause or warrants? Or to aggregate all the information it gathers from constantly monitoring us and use that for whatever nefarious purposes it can imagine (like collecting guns from dissidents)? Trump does. He even supports forcing tech companies to put intentional security holes in their products to make accessing your personal information easier for the government, as well as every black hat hacker from Kiev to Pyonyang.
      Or what about his view that anybody on a secret, arbitrary, and unaccountable government list should be prohibited from buying firearms?

      I think a better statement is that he’s the second amendment candidate the gun-control crowd needs, because with him in the race, Hillary doesn’t look quite as much like the fascist she really is.

    • “We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what’s happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, ‘Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.’ These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people.”

      That’s my favorite part of his platform.

      • so you think he will be a staunch supporter of 2a but his willingness to trample the 1a is OK?

        that ad is a joke, you can copy and paste in “trump” to describe his stance 4 years ago.

        • Whoaaaaaaa there. The last bit of my comment was pure sarcasm. It’s so absurd on its face, I honestly didn’t think anyone would interpret it that way.

      • I remember watching the debate where he said that. Remember he was referring to ISIS. I’m 100% fine with cutting off ISIS recruiters from the internet no questions asked.

        • That’s because you don’t understand how the internet works. There is no way to block any group or country. Case in point is China trying to block parts of the net and the many ways their people get around it.

    • Yup, you are not very smart are you? Don’t, I could care less for any more of your silly thoughts.

  2. Yep…I’m a one-issue voter this year and have to go the direction that seems *less* likely to damage my 2A rights.

  3. Not just 2A. The pantsuit has a rich agenda she has waited 40 years to ram through.
    On firearms she is all in for Australian Gun Policies right here.

    • I’ll probably do the same — but only if it looks like my state’s electoral votes might be in play.

      Given that WA will go big for the D candidate even if she’s in jail, I think I’m pretty safe in planning to vote for none of the above. (I’ll still vote for House and Senate races, of course, because we’ll need them to restrain whichever insane weasel wins the presidency.)

  6. I’m listening… you know it’d be easier to swallow the Trump if it didn’t keep pricking and stabbing… I wonder if Trump talks to and treats his family the same way.

  8. I was a Ted Cruz guy all the way. I don’t like Trump as a man or as our next president. I think that he is completely full of sh*t, just like the other 95% of politicians. But if you believe in your 2nd ammendment rights, you have to vote Trump. Casting your vote for anyone else is insane. We are a 2 party country, deal with it. There will never be a viable 3rd party candidate.

    • Exactly my position. Ted’s gone. Gary has no chance and I don’t care about pot. The hildebeast must be stopped. Trump/PENCE 2016!

    • /\/\/\ This. Manditory in a swing state. If you vote Johnson in a swing state you are voting for HC. If you vote HC you are voting for corruption.

  9. “I generally oppose gun control, but I support the ban on assault weapons and I support a slightly longer waiting period to purchase a gun. With today’s Internet technology we should be able to tell within 72-hours if a potential gun owner has a record.”

    The America We Deserve, by Donald Trump, p.102 , Jul 2, 2000

      • Who I vote for isn’t the issue.

        The issue is that Trump is not someone who can be trusted on guns. His positions prior to running for political office are of far more import than what he says now because they’re far more likely to be genuine representations of his real beliefs.

        And his tradition of reversing himself on guns to suit the needs of the moment continue even today. As you may recall, he first stated that the Orlando shooting would have been ended early if clubgoers were armed. A day later he reversed himself and tweeted that he didn’t want clubgoers armed and that he was talking about security guards and police. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/donald-trump-revises-position-on-guns-in-nightclubs/

        • If you don’t vote for Trump, meaning if you vote for a third-party candidate or simply stay home and don’t vote at all, You sir, are making it just that much easier for her to steal the election. You will be one of those who felt “why bother, I don’t fully agree with everything that one candidate says, so I won’t try to stop Hillary.” And she will win and we will lose more ground very quickly to the Left.

          If you vote Trump, you will have done what you CAN do to try to stop her through the accepted peaceful process we have to try to make work.

        • Ben S: not true. we do not have a popular vote. unless you live in a contested state your vote really does not matter. this cycle that really only means Ohio, Iowa, maybe Florida, and incredibly, Utah, and Arizona. a non vote is a vote too and it is OK to punt.

        • “Ben S: not true. we do not have a popular vote. unless you live in a contested state your vote really does not matter. this cycle that really only means Ohio, Iowa, maybe Florida, and incredibly, Utah, and Arizona. a non vote is a vote too and it is OK to punt.”

          The flaw in your reasoning is it assumes the number of people not voting is less than the margin of victory.

          Are you willing to bet it all on that assumption?

          I’m certainly not. This election, like every other one for several decades, is about turn-out. If POTG stay home in enough numbers, Clinton could well take a few red states.

          Likewise, if POTG turn-out in SIGNIFICANT numbers and vote Trump, we could take a few blue states.

          To put it into perspective, the national election numbers reveal only about 50-60% of the population voting for President since at least Reagan. Who is staying home?

          Here are your choices:

          (1) The proportion D/R voters of people not voting is similar to those that did vote, so higher turn-out would not make a difference in the outcome.

          (2) It’s D voters (voters that would vote D if they voted) staying home; higher D turn-out would ensure a Clinton victory.

          (3) It’s R voters (voters that would vote R if they voted) staying home; higher R turn-out would ensure a Trump victory.

          Given that the talk from POTG who don’t like Trump and claim they wish to stay out of it would PROBABLY choose Trump over Clinton if they were forced to vote (and voting 2A solely), it’s reasonable to assume, as a starting point, zeroth order approximation anyway, that you at least possibly ARE giving the election to Clinton, not having “no effect.”

          But so long as you feel warm and fuzzy inside about your self righteous indignation, all’s good. Right?

          In summary…tl;dr: Turn-out matters. Turn-out matters A LOT.

        • JR, There’s a lot of noise in the formula, but in the end, you know as well as I do the popular vote means absolutely nothing. At least when it comes to choosing the President.

          The Electors who actually elect the President have no legal obligation per USC to follow the will of the electorate. None. Sure, some states have “laws” about following the mandate of the popular vote, but there aren’t enough to matter, and the Electors could still cast their vote for the candidate not selected by voters, and have it be cast as valid. All they’d have to do is return home and face a misdemeanor charge in their state.

          By which point, a Presidential Pardon would be in place.

    • In 2000, you and most of the people who visit this site, and call themselves “pro gun”, probably would’ve agreed with him. America has come along way since then.

        • It’s true. There really wasn’t a “gun rights” movement then like there is today. Not by a long shot. Many people just didn’t know any better. Many in the GOP were for gun control at the time, and Bush said he’d sign another AWB if it was put on his desk. Luckily, that never happened because the NRA and the very begging of the gun rights movement had begun to have its effect. I think a lot of you never trump fans need to do more research on the political history of this country. It goes back much farther than the W administration.

        • Huh? I’m not a never Trump fan. But I’m also not going to pretend that he’s something he isn’t. And I’m very aware of the environment in those days; I well remember Bill Ruger’s positions back in the 1980s. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to buy a Ruger, but it certainly means I’m going to be aware of it if I do.

        • Well, my mistake. It seems like a vast majority of the people arguing politics these days don’t know there’s history beyond the past 15 years or so.

        • Trump does that all the time, and it’s been extensively documented by conservative and libertarian news orgs as well. I’ve lost count of the number of times he’s gone “I never said that,” even if there’s video proof that he said exactly that in front of 4,000 people yesterday.

          I’m not saying he’s worse than Hillary (I’m not sure anyone could be), but let’s not pretend this guy is anything other than what he is — a weasel. One that might (maybe, kind of) be on our side, but still a lying weasel.

        • Ing:

          I think he does it because it works. pwrserge is a perfect example of why. Rather than watch the interview or take a look at the twitter quote to see that Trump actually did engage in an instant 180, he ignored it because he doesn’t like PBS. And, yeah, he’s an absolute weasel. It’s going to be him or Clinton, and I despise both. And I’m not talking simply about gun issues — I seem to disagree with both of them on most things.

    • John A, Smith,

      Which viable candidate will be better than Trump to support our Second Amendment?

      More importantly, a Trump Presidency comes with an even stronger Republican majority in Congress — meaning a strong enough majority to override Presidential vetoes. And a Republican majority in Congress also means a Congress that will almost certainly NOT propose legislation to infringe on our right to keep and bear arms.

      A Hillary Presidency comes with a Democrat majority in Congress that will CERTAINLY propose legislation to infringe on our right to keep and bear arms.

      If you fail to vote for Trump, you are helping to install a government that WILL infringe on your right to keep and bear arms.

      • uncommon_sense:

        You state that a Clinton presidency will lead to a Democratic Party majority in Congress and that election of Trump will lead to a Republican majority. This statement is at odds with historical results, and pretty much what every political expert believes. Since 1981, a party-aligned Congress and president are extremely rare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Presidents_and_control_of_Congress

        If you want to argue that Clinton is anti-gun, I’m with you. If you want to argue that she’d be a horrible president, I’m with you. But don’t lie about easily verifiable facts to support those arguments or suggest that a vote for who is president is a vote for an entire government. Quite frankly, as you can see from the above, it’s far more likely that a vote for a president from one party will lead to a Congress from the other.

        • Keep in mind that Trump has no real interest in domestic issues he even said he would leave most of that to the VP and his other cabinet appointees and he would focus on foreign policy and trade issues. So even though I was late to the Trump train, I ain’t so scared no more.

        • “what every political expert believes.”

          Thanks for the belly laugh…

          “political expert” is a bit of an oxymoron, with emphasis on “moron.”

          Who are these so-called “experts?” Pundits interviewed on CNN? Other politicians? Bloggers with no history of credibility?

        • John A. Smith,

          Let’s see. Bill Clinton won the election in 1992 and he had a Democrat majority in Congress for the first two years of his Presidency. George Bush won the election in 2000 and had a Republican majority in the House for the first two years of his Presidency and then a Republican majority in the House and Senate thereafter. Obama won the election in 2008 and had a Democrat majority in Congress for the first two years of his Presidency.

          And the only reason that Bush did not have an immediate majority in the Senate is because he actually lost the popular vote and the key senators that would lose office were “protected” in their six year term.

          The politics of the populace and their voting has become ever more polarized. On top of that, a lot of people will inevitably vote for Hillary simply because she is the first major candidate that is a woman and they want to see a woman in the White House on principle. If Hillary wins the popular vote, she is virtually guaranteed to bring a majority to both houses of Congress with her. And if she fails to immediately carry the Senate, she will two years later.

          I cannot gamble on Hillary winning the general election, and the Democrats failing to take the Senate, to stop Hillary’s ambitions on gun control. How anyone can think that is a better bet than Trump in the White House is just saying something to assuage their conscience for voting their feelings.

  10. Having read hundreds of DNC leaked emails, I can say they were horrified with Trump’s Supreme Court picks because they weren’t ok with killing babies, don’t enjoy having illegal immigrants affecting the vote, and they weren’t anti-gun.

  12. I don’t believe it’s a 2A single issue voting thing. What I believe is that how one views the right to keep and bear arms defines how they think overall. Either we have individual rights and are individually responsible, or not. The left believes not. Therefore it logically follows their belief system that the government knows best and we are all too irresponsible to be trusted with something so dangerous as firearms. Those of us who are not sheep know different. This nation was founded upon the principles of individual freedom and responsibility. And no finer words describe those principles than these:

    But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

  14. This is pretty far off topic.

    I was sitting on my couch reading this article just now. My 4 year old is in the room with me watching The iron giant. (great movie by the way) My boy came up to me and said, Dad, they don’t sell cannons around here anymore do they? I said, no they don’t. Being the inquisitive little fellow he is, he of course followed up with, why dad? Being the honest fellow that I am I said, because the government says we can’t have they. He then said, Is it because the government is afraid we will shoot them with them?
    Sure buddy, is all I could say.

    • Your son has wisdom far beyond his few years. A Government that has become so fearful and disdainful of the people it is charged with governing that it will deny them their right to keep and bear Arms is a Government that needs to be replaced.

  15. “My accomplishments as Secretary of State? Well, I’m glad you asked! My proudest accomplishment in which I take the most pride, mostly because of the opposition it faced early on, you know… the remnants of prior situations and mind-sets that were too narrowly focused in a manner whereby they may have overlooked the bigger picture, and we didn’t do that, and I’m proud of that. Very proud. I would say that’s A major accomplishment.”

    – Hillary Clinton 11 March 2014

    anyone that makes up that gibberish has got my vote…….yeah right….Trump 2016

    • To be fair, you can’t really expect anyone to come right out and say “the entire Middle East is on fire and Europe is smoldering, and my efforts as secretary of state made it happen.”

  16. “Trump is the 2A Candidate We Need”

    I don’t know about that, but I do know that he’s the candidate we have. The other choice is too horrible to contemplate.

  17. I’m for whatever the best path or vehicle that stops Ovary Clinton from obtaining 270. If that is Trump, I’ll cast my vote gor him. If a third party catches fire and can take a few blue states to prevent 270, I’ll support that.

    Given the recent months, this election is for Rule of Law. If a corrupt criminal who receive a pass as above the law become President, it’s going to get ugly with progressives everywhere, especially in government and the legal system, abusing their power to force their agenda.

    It may force the choice of half the citizenry to either surrender to the new progressive authoritarianism or take matters into their own hands at all costs. Sadly, given human nature, I’d bet on the former.

    • The important point is that even if Trump wins the popular vote – the only a small portion of electors are bound by state law to follow the will of the electorate. Furthermore, there is no federal law at all.

      I will hold my nose, cover my ears, close my eyes, and vote for the Donald. Whether that will matter at all, is becoming less and less clear as we draw closer.

      The indicators that Hilary will be “installed” no matter what, are becoming clearer, and more frequent.

      • “I will hold my nose, cover my ears, close my eyes, and vote for the Donald. Whether that will matter at all, is becoming less and less clear as we draw closer.

        The indicators that Hilary will be “installed” no matter what, are becoming clearer, and more frequent.”

        Very true. This is the major concern now.

      • I am lucky in that I do not live in a contested state and my vote does not matter either way. I have the luxury of being able to stand on principle and not vote for a populist. I am embarrassed for the NRA in their support of such an obvious charlatan.

  18. I wish I had the luxury of living in a deep red state. That would give me the luxury of being able to say “I dislike Trump so therefore I will not vote.” However I live in NC (have I mentioned that before?) and so I take it as my civic duty to get out and vote. I’m not saying anything that anybody else has not said on this site, but the brass tax of it is that when it comes to 2A rights, we absolutely cannot trust HRC and the Dems. Perhaps if I lived in a deep red state I could stand on the principles soapbox and vote for a 3rd party, knowing my state would go to the GOP anyway. As much as I hate to do it, I’ll vote Trump. Before anyone gets on my case about principles, in a purple-NC, my principles dictate that there be no erosion to the 2A and therefore I must cast my principled vote to the GOP candidate.

    • Trump trails by between 4 and 9 points in NC. Historically this has been a purple state, not so much this time around.

  19. Anatomy of a non-sequitor
    1) Claim Trump is who we need
    2) Offer Hillary’s horrible stances as supporting evidence for #1

    Is Cox an idiot, or does he just think I am? Besides the fact Hillary’s many failings have nothing to do with Donald’s promises, that man himself has endorsed and supported that exact woman’s exact same failings enthusiasticaly as recent as 2013. Donald the adultering, grifting, lying, sleaze ball has already shown just how cheap a date the so-called “moral majority” of social issues “conservatives” are by the wholesale support by evangelicals. Are gun voters so similarly cheap that all it takes are scary vows by the opposition to make us lose all sense & throw our weight behind a man already seeking common cause with them (no fly no buy)?

    If the RKBA was to be the referendum issue this election, we backed quite possibly the worst horse running, except perhaps Christie.

      • Perfectly clear, for those willing to think;
        -There are damned few reasons to vote for Trump (I’m nearly at the point of saying it’s “none” but not there yet)
        -There are many reasons to not vote for Hillary or otherwise prevent her election

        And the two –logically– have nothing to do with each other. Any rational analysis of the situation will conclude he is simply the wrong man for this scenario, considering there were other candidates who had many legitimate reasons –with supporting evidence– to warrant widespread support in the GOP and nation at large.

        Further;
        -There are a couple weak or poorly supported arguments in favor of Trump supporting gun rights issues
        -There is a ton of evidence to the contrary
        -There were several other candidates with proven track records of being supportive of gun rights
        -Hillary has done her best to make RKBA the issue of the election, largely supplanting Trump’s immigration noises (which rapidly morphed into nebulous ‘nationalist’ appeals that can be twisted into almost any liberal policy)

        And these four have everything to do with each other. Again, logical review is clear that Trump was not the best foot forward for this fight, assuming he ever could be.

        Lastly;
        -There are at least a half dozen reasons –per decade– that indicate Trump should be hated and utterly toxic to so-called “values voters” concerned with family, faith, future generations, social mores, that sort of thing.
        -These people supposedly pride themselves in holding their own self (and others) to a high standard of righteousness. These people often describe themselves as “Evangelical Christians,” and are the main front of the so-called conservative Culture War (basically the Republican version of social justice warriors).
        -These people fell head over heels for Trump early on, even when a “pandering” (or legitimately evangelical as it turned out) candidate right up their alley was running.
        -The attraction was almost exclusively due to –from what I can tell– Trump’s supposed ability to piss off their hated enemies in the media & left, rather than his vague policy goals or achievements or history or even personal character.

        It turns out the scale of media outrage was largely exaggerated (the vast majority of slavish coverage of Trump was positive) and mostly evaporated after the primary to the point that Trump gets similar coverage time as Hillary, only far more negative than has ever been seen. And it is having a distinct effect, as it always does, in alienating the moronic undecided voters. The only difference from the usual, is that Trump has a weak base to rely upon. Again, he was a poor choice for this battle, the claims he was the ultimate “media wrangler” who could garner as much free press to spread his message as he wanted, were total bullshit.

        Now he faces a consistently distorting media ready to bite him at every misstep (which Trump ensures there are plenty of), that will not let him get his message out (assuming Trump can even sort his thoughts well enough to articulate one), and an incompetent campaign structure that is incapable of doing anything but self-gratifying rallies & the occasional self-gratifying telephone interview on friendly media. Third parties are outspending him on campaign ads in swing states, for God’s sake, while the man comp’s his own companies for campaign costs (transferring funds from GOP to Trump Inc instead of the lowest bidder or best option) and pays himself/family advisers an unprecedented salary for the hard work of whipping up adoring crowds (again, transferring funds from GOP to Trump Inc), and even uses GOP funds to pay back personal loans he gave to his campaign (once again, transferring funds form GOP to Trump) while doing a pretty shitty job of raising or supplying cash himself in return.

        “I’m gonna destroy the Republican Party for you, and it won’t cost you a dime, because I’ll make them pay me to do it”

  20. Trump needs to change his campaign signs from:

    “TRUMP: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”

    to

    “TRUMP: KEEP AMERICA OUT OF THE HANDS OF HILLARY”.

    • He’s making the case daily that it makes more sense to forcibly prevent her ascension than for us to elect him our leader, that’s for sure.

  21. Trump may well be a chance, but that is against a certainty. He has always had a loud, public negotiating style that takes nothing off the table, and at this point in time I think we ought minimally consider not approaching every transaction the US govt enters with hands up and pockets out. Have we not seen and heard enough about public toilets and the newly endangered rights of a delusional sub-minority? It isn’t Trump against anybody/everybody who ever lived; Cincinatus isn’t available and neither George Washington. Virtue signalling is NOT a strategy and elections really DO have consequences.

    In the end, Trump is a mirror of all our situation. We had nice, suburban people come out en masse. They quoted the Constitution and Bible verse alike, and the result was exactly what again? They’re still being harassed by formerly administrative agencies whose very salaries we pay. So now we have somebody who refuses to be bullied off center stage. I feel much the same way myself. For my part I would very much rather simply say, ‘I will never be a Socialist’ and leave it at that. But if push comes to shove I, and I believe very many more will push back twice as hard, as per great pharoah’s suggestion.

    • There were and still are better men ready, willing, and able, but they weren’t sufficiently entertaining for today’s electorate that cares more about pissing off the opposition than winning elections, let alone good governance.

  22. Trump and The Exalted Celestial Dowager Empress of Chappaqua are not candidates I can support. Gary Johnson is a candidate I can support. If my choice is a ‘wasted vote’, it’s mine to waste.

  23. You are all focusing on Trump, not focusing on the long game, the Supreme Court. With the potential for at least 4 lifetime appointments you could certainly kiss the Bill of Rights away with Hillary’s nominees. 40 years of liberal ideology on the bench. Don’t make it a vote for Trump, make it a vote against Hillary.

    • Why do Trump people always tell me to focus on Trump, then immediately go into how bad Hillary will be, as if that has anything at all to do with Trump?

      If beating Hillary was truly so damn important to you, why didn’t you support a candidate we could BOTH agree was better than Hillary? At one point, Cruz & Rubio were like 80% & 60% of primary voters’ second choice picks, respectively, while Trump was in the 20% range. Oh, right, it was because the election was all about “berning down the GOP Elite bourgeoise” without any kind of game plan at all for dealing with Hillary. I hope it felt good, is all I can say, because you Bolsheviks have cursed all of us to (another) eight years of gun control hell.

  24. I’m picturing Bill Clinton, moving into the White House, again. He can look at the decor, the slight changes here and there over the years, check out the location where he and all the interns did their activities, and wink at the young ladies entering and exiting the White House. Hillary can give Clinton a grimace while glancing at the place on the floor where Monica ate his junk. Hillary can have someone else take the 3:00am phone calls, and have someone else worry about her online security because email and the internet are too complicated for her, and Bill can wink at the secretaries and female assistants.

    It’s absolutely ridiculous.

    • I almost got excited when I heard the rumors Trump planned to basically let Pence do everything while he himself jet-setted around the nation/world to adoring crowds of publicity, but then he continued to double-down on overriding the man & conservative policy issues, and seeking the destruction of the conservative constitutionalist wing of the party, and made it clear he would be Charles in Charge if elected.

  26. Cthulu / SMOD 2016
    Why settle for the lesser evil?

    Yeah, I know it’s recycled, but that one never gets old.

  27. Here’s some alternative reasoning …

    You can vote for the reactive, under-informed, unilateralist the media, administrative state, government functionaries, congress-critters, oligarch clientele, and the rest of the Nomenklatura (but I repeat myself) will give a free pass to do anydamnthing with the Imperial presidency, while pushing ever more “just let the savior do it” into the unitary executive,

    OR,

    You can vote for the ditto, ditto, ditto, the ditto will be on like stink on dog poo, from before they are sworn in, analyzing and deconstructing every observation and initiative, while devolving and dispersing as much action and authority to local, distributed implementation, as a check on the Imperial and Imperious Presidency.

    Put plainly, Trump will be moderated in what he’d like to do, while Clinton (II) will be encouraged, and enabled. The crazy on Trump will be peeled off, some, while Clinton’s will be amplified.

    It’s not a hard choice. I like my crazy corrupt-o-crats corralled a bit, but that’s just me.

    • Oh, I hear you; THIS time, we’ll be able to reign in the dictatorial ambitions of a crazed megalomaniac fawned over by adoring crowds while shouting expletives…

  28. The American people overwhelmingly believe the choice to own a firearm for self-defense is theirs to make. It doesn’t belong to the government. It is an individual freedom. So it is too important, too fundamental, to be subject to one set of rules for elites like Clinton and a different set for the rest of us.
    Is that your calculation, too?

    Of course, Cox and the NRA are actually right on this one.

  29. Supreme Court Appointments are perhaps the defining issue of this election. And I’m for constructionist judges. Not because I necessarily agree that the policies constructionists get to, but because of the way they get there.

    If you want to do a great many things, the process is political, or should be, not judicial. Go win the argument, then you’ll win the vote to change the law to what you want.

    /Rant
    The strategy of enacting law by other means, like by packing the courts after “winning” one vote, one time, is along with being just slimy: an admission of weakness – you can’t get it through; a procedural hack – you aren’t sure you’ll “win” more than once, so stack all you can into your one “win”; and blatant elitism, meaning contempt for people who don’t agree with you – you are so right, you’ll impose your notion on other people who don’t want it, by any means you can.

    The fact is, “they”, meaning the consistent progressive agenda that dare not speak it’s name(*), or agenda(*), went the court route more aggressively after the ERA was “defeated.” They took exactly the wrong lesson from the fact that the vast majority of citizens in the US want “equal rights” for all pretty vehemently, *and* they couldn’t get the amendment through. Maybe, on inspection it didn’t say that.

    Here’s the thing. Rather than learn that a skeptical and diverse polity will look for narrowly crafted, crisp law of unambiguous scope and interpretation, and craft what they want to meet that “Can’t also drive a truck through the loopholes.” test, they decided the rubes are to stupid or biased to be let to manage themselves, so they’ll do “the right thing” by stealth. It’s the same thing with their ridiculous “common sense” gun laws, so sloppy that in going after BGs, they sweep up unlimited GGs as bycatch.

    For many of them that’s a feature, not a bug. (The process is the punishment.) Banning by other means. Just like the federal health care law, where the “architect” is recorded, *three different times* crowing about how they had to hoodwink people to get it passed, because if people knew what it really did and was, they’d never vote for it.

    The thing is, we’re on to this ploy. The single most damning thing we could do to reign back this nonsense is *actually write and propose* the amendments, laws, and regulations these folks say they want, every time. Write it, narrowly, specifically, crisply. And dare them to submit their wording. And bring the alternative to every discussion of “the ‘common sense gun control (or whatever) proposal.” Every time.

    “Explain to me how this gets the BGs without dinging the GGs?”

    “Explain to me how this can’t be hijacked to do something ‘unintended’, like Civil Asset Forfeiture becoming a funding by taking mechanism for local police. Or zero tolerance drug laws resulting in charges against a hotel and a ferry – the boat. Or RICOH being used by a cabal of Attorneys General to go after people advocating for a political position at odds with their party platform?(**)”

    There’s a word for imposing your order for society on others, against their will. Wait, it’ll come to me…

    (*) The unspoken, eternal “progressive” agenda is management of society, by an unelected superior class self-selected to be “better”, in their own terms, imposing their idea of a better world on other people who disagree. And indifferent to collateral damage. Hey, if you want to make a better world, you gotta break a few not-us-so-who-cares heads.

    It’s “progress” toward a better world. They know what better is, how to get there, and have the right to impose it, whatever that takes. The notion of serving the will of the people who don’t agree with you is anathema to these folks. They will say with a straight face: “sometimes democracy gets it wrong.” While that’s true in one sense: “Sometimes democracy gets it wrong, in my opinion.” that’s tangent and irrelevant in another. Democracy is the agreement that we’ll decide some issues a particular way, not the decisions, not the how well they work. A Republic is people self-governing, which may be by democracy, direct or otherwise. Or some other way. A Constitutional Republic has a governing charger, essentially a partnership agreement: “We’ll govern ourselves together this way, on these issues.”

    If you think “Sometimes democracy gets it wrong.” the solution is to make your argument better, limit the scope of what’s democratically determined, or both. (I do, and those are the solutions I pursue.)

    These people are The Alliance in Firefly / Serenity, and that fact gives poor Joss recurring headaches.

    (**) It is indeed schadenfreudelicious that these same AGs are being subjected to their own RICOH suit, for their collusion in an ongoing criminal conspiracy. Punch back twice as hard, as someone once said.

    • Eh, I think the only reason we’re so desperate for the Judicial angle is because we’ve lost utterly in both the Legislative (seriously, the Hearing Protection Act can’t even get a floor vote?) and especially the Executive with now multiple federal agencies snipping up gun rights when they are able (ATF as always, now the State Dept with the ITAR crap, Homeland Security with its fear of violent patriots, and even the EPA with the lead pollution angle). Heller is really the ONLY win at the federal level we’ve had in…decades. Even ‘friendly’ presidents like the Bushes have done nearly as much to corrode gun rights as the Democrats, only with far less resistance from the ‘pro gun’ party.

      Hillary will win, Heller will fall to an opinion that would make the author of Dred Scott blush, and a permanent national ban on semi-autos will be rammed through in the first two years before midterms. And we’ll finally see whether the States and people are more loyal to the ideals of the constitution or the force of government.

  30. Trump is a plant for Hillary. Any coincidence that only after he and Hillary got their nominations did he start spouting the most outrageous faux pas ever and his poll numbers started tanking, when before his numbers were rising? Hillary is such a horrible candidate that only someone much worse could ever put her in office. Trump was the perfect trojan horse, loudmouthed enough to get the nomination by appealing to the fringe tea party base while having no chance in the general election due to his fringe views alienating a majority of the country. And he’ll keep saying and doing things to lower his numbers now that Hillary’s in, just watch.

    • “I’m gonna destroy the Republican Party for you, and it won’t cost you a dime, because I’ll make them pay me to do it”
      –Call with Bill Clinton

  32. The fact that support for the Second Amendment comes down to voting Trump shows that there is a very, very serious sickness afflicting the political system of the United States.

    • It is fear. Republicans, be they gun owners, fiscal hawks, or social conservatives, were so terrified by the existential threat of Hillary that they panicked and ran to the loudest braggart who claimed he would slay the beast. They asked for no resume, they demanded no references, they needed no proof. They even disparaged multiple grizzled warriors with battle scars humbly offering their services from the corner booth in the pub for the smooth-palmed kid shouting from the middle of the dance floor, for not having a sufficiently commanding “presence” to be victorious.

      Three days from the showdown, they are coming to realize their champion has spent his time mostly eating cheetos at home while trolling people on Twitter, in preparation for the ultimate battle. No bookie in his right mind is giving him odds.

      • Nicely done. I would offer the following…

        They even disparaged multiple grizzled warriors with battle scars humbly offering their services from the corner booth in the pub for the smooth-palmed kid shouting from the middle of the dance floor, for not having a sufficiently commanding “presence” to be victorious.

        Those ‘grizzled warriors’ were RINOs, the ‘political class’ who do basically exactly as everyone else does – protect their ‘phoney-baloney jobs’. The rest of the “slate” was demonstrably a joke when it came to ‘conservative’ values. I’m not talking nonsensical petty crap like praying in public, I’m talking doubling the National Debt just like that first of many RINO hacks – Reagan. Christie? A nazi running a waste dump of a state. Jindahl? The math whiz who couldn’t jumpstart his car. Rand Paul? Maybe, but still too weird for mass-consumption. Ted Cruz? Just that creepy guy who will impose his wacky religion on your life – like a Muslim. Shocking he didn’t sell well.

        The rest of them talked a good game, but in the end it was the same old bullshit, and people are tired of it. They know that Trump can’t deliver a fraction of what he promises, and is batshit crazy. They are just so tired of people blowing smoke up their ass that they will jump on any other bus, even if it is driven by a guy who is passing around mushrooms and a crack pipe. Because it’s better than the usual suspects doing what they have done since the 80s.

  33. A bit off topic but something occurred to me the other day. I listened to Jill Stein’s acceptance speech and even though I lump her in with other rabid gun grabbing, economic fruticakes, the sound of her voice didn’t make me want to stab myself in the ears like Clinton’s does. I can’t think of anyone in the world I despise like her.

    Anyway, I have no idea what exactly Trump will do, if elected. I know what Clinton will do. I also know what her supreme court justices will do for several decades.

Comments are closed.