The Second Amendment Camouflage of John McCain

One of the things John McCain said in his recent speech to the NRA convention veered off the subject of gun control and over into other territory, including foreign policy and economics. His statement on the condition of the American economy was the most surprising. Lauding successive, uninterrupted quarters of what he termed as “explosive economic growth”, he made the statement that Americans were once more feeling optimistic about their economic situation and the economy of the nation.

Was he kidding? No, evidently he was serious, or seemed to be. With McCain, it is hard to tell for sure. It is almost as though he might have been trying to dissuade a potential NRA member-many who dislike and mistrust McCain-from possibly putting a bullet in his head. If he really believes that drivel there could not be a hell of a lot there worth shooting at.

Nevertheless, the Secret Service deemed it necessary to take no chances. They banned guns from the national convention of the country’s premiere guns rights advocate groups-at least in the area of proximity to the man the group has in the past roundly denounced as one of the nation’s premiere standard-bearers for incremental limitations on the right to bear arms. McCain was there supposedly to mend fences, of course, but the SS decided to take no chances. Some at the convention must have seen this as an omen of things to come.

Neither Barak Obama nor Hillary Clinton received an invitation to appear at the convention, but evidently, Mike Huckabee did not get the memo, and so jokingly derided a falling chair as Obama diving for cover. He has since apologized repeatedly for this off-the-cuff remark, each such expression of regret increasing his chances exponentially of acquiring the vice-presidential spot on McCain’s GOP ticket.

Others there denounced and ridiculed both Hillary and Obama for their alleged anti-gun beliefs, though Obama at least has stated he defends not only the rights of hunters and gun collectors, but also the rights of law-abiding citizens to have guns for self-defense.

My boy Mitch McConnell, Kentucky’s senior Senator and House Minority Leader-himself up for re-election this year-declared that a Democratic presidency would be bad for gun owners and the Second Amendment. I’m afraid on some levels he might be right. By the same token, I have to wonder how seriously he takes McCain’s promise to protect the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners. McCain has promised to close the gun show loophole, which he claims is the major area of disagreement between himself and the NRA. Yet, he swears he will otherwise protect Second Amendment rights.

Despite these reassurances, I think Senator McConnell must to this day be steamed over the passage of McCain-Feingold, which he himself fought tooth and nail. He had to be biting his lip to keep from bringing that up to the attendees at the Louisville Kentucky convention for the NRA-one of the largest and most powerful lobbies in Washington.

McConnell sees this as a First Amendment issue-wrongly, in my view. I see it as limiting the ability of special interests to buy the loyalties of our elected representatives. McConnell and I do agree on one thing, however. McCain-Feingold is an awful piece of legislation that not only solves nothing, it in fact creates more problems. McCain is so far off the reservation on this and other matters, from a Republican Party perspective, I have to wonder how McConnell could possibly take him seriously. Party be damned, these two don’t like each other-at all.

Dr. Daniel Mongiardo, the current Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky, a Democrat, was there as well, and is an Obama supporter, yet made no mention of the upcoming national election. There were probably a few snickers at the memory of the last Kentucky governor’s race, an ad for which depicted Mongiardo and his then running mate and now Kentucky Governor, Steve Beshear, sitting in their camouflage with their hunting rifles, smiling at the cameras.

All of which brings me to my main point-the era of gun control activism is all but done for. Democrats have learned the hard way that any legislation intended to curtail the rights of gun owners, by applying a dubious at best interpretation of the Constitution as a “living document” that “grows and evolves” with the times, does not play well in Peoria, nor petty much anywhere else outside the West Coast and the Northeast. I have a pretty good idea, in fact, that it might be starting to wear thin in many of those areas. Any such malarkey will result, in most cases and in most places, in an electoral route.

This is important, because here is the reality-Democrats like to win elections as much as Republicans do, and, plainly speaking, they know this is a losing issue for them.

Oh, I’m sure that, given enough power and control, they would do their utmost to try to sneak in some gun control legislation, or add a few tweaks here and there-close the gun show loophole, ban first this or that specific type of firearm, etc. Be that as it may, I believe-at least I dearly hope-that they will not carry it too far. They simply cannot afford to.

The fact that Democrats feel obliged nowadays to run campaigns in which they depict themselves as avid hunters and sportsmen, showing off their guns in faux hunting scenes with big toothy grins and the like, tells you all you need to know.

McCain might well be a different story. A man who prides himself on his independence and his status as a maverick who is willing to “cross the aisle to get things done” can probably find a reason to institute draconian gun control laws as easily as he can support-well, cap and trade, for example.

Granted, this issue and national security are probably two of McCain’s strongest suits among a pretty limited wardrobe. I just don’t think either one of these fits him that well. In fact, I think he will bend too easily on these issues, as on so many others. When he does, I think there is a good chance that his ass will split wide open, and his party along with him. Since we are on the subject of “suits”, how likely is John McCain to support legislation to enable lawsuits against gun manufacturers? This is a major bone of contention, and is one of the issues whereby John McCain insists he is trustworthy and the Democratic candidates are not.

On the other hand, there have been recent spates of Democratic electoral victories involving conservative Democrats who support gun owners. One such election was in Illinois, for the seat once held by former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Another was in Mississippi, which President Bush won by nearly twenty-five percentage points. The Democratic victory here was hardly a squeaker. The Democrat challenger won the seat by a double-digit margin. The Democrats have won other such victories in Ohio and Louisiana, all with conservative candidates. One does not have to be a Nostradamus to see a trend emerging here.

This inspires in me a great deal of hope, that more and more conservative Democrats win elections up until that time that the Republican Party, conceivably under President McCain’s “guidance”, finally implodes.

The next few years could in fact see the biggest political realignment since that of the so-called “Reagan Democrats”, or Nixon’s “Silent Majority”.

This time around, like those and other previous occasions, might well amount to a political slaughter. You will know the winners, for the most part, by their hunting trophies, their trusty rifles, and their camouflage hunting jackets. The losers, from whichever party, will be unarmed and unprepared-clueless, as always.

The key to understanding the importance of this issue in the minds of voters and Second Amendment supporters is really quite simple. Issues such as the economy, education, health care, and foreign policy, can and probably will be tempered to suit the prevailing need and political climate-tweaked, improved, revised, and revisited countless times. In most instances, the effects are temporary and transitory in a general sense. Even a major war, as borne out by history, ends at some point.

A constitutional right, once trampled under any pretense, is likely forever lost, leaving nothing but the precedent for yet more loss of freedom, little by little, bit by bit, until soon, nothing remains but the meaningless facade of an archaic, whimsical historical document.