Tag Archives: elections

The Knox Update

Friends Like These… Only Get America New Gun Control Laws

John Cornyn
John Cornyn … IMG Sen. John Cornyn of Texas facebook

Tombstone, Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- With the Senate’s passage of the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” on Thursday, and the House’s passage on Friday, the bill is headed to the President’s desk in time for signing before everyone flees Washington to celebrate Independence Day. That seems a bit ironic, doesn’t it.

Others have already written about the numerous problems with the legislation, so I won’t dive deeply into those, but will instead focus on the political ramifications of the whole mess. As a lifelong politics watcher with over 30 years of active participation in the political process, including lobbying, campaigning, working directly for candidates, and as a campaign consultant, I’m at a loss to understand the Republican strategy of working so hard to come up with a “bipartisan, compromise” to give Joe Biden a “win” on gun control.

Sure, it would be tempting for them to want to be able to go home and say “We did something in response to the horror in Uvalde,” but “doing something” that is guaranteed to fail, with components that are patently unconstitutional, and which is guaranteed to alienate a large and very politically active segment of their base, just makes no sense.

You would think that chief Republican negotiator, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, would have gotten a clue when he was booed from the stage at a Republican event in his home state.

Instead, he referred to the frustrated Republicans as a “mob,” and vowed to stay the course in his efforts to “reach a compromise.” It was just after this that Cornyn announced language had been agreed upon. When that language was finally presented to the Senate and the public, senators were given less than an hour to review the details before they were asked to vote to approve the measure to move forward, setting it up for passage the next day.

A group of 15 Republican senators joined with the entire block of Democrats in the Senate to push the bill through. Of those Republicans, four are retiring at the end of this term, so voters can’t hold them directly responsible for their actions. [Toomey (PA), Burr (NC), Portman (OH), Blunt (MO)]

Eight were just reelected in 2020, so they’re not up for reelection until 2026 [Cornyn (TX), Graham (SC), McConnell (KY), Cassidy (LA), Capito (WV), Ernst (IA), Tillis (R-NC), Collins (ME)], and Mitt Romney of Utah, is not up for reelection until 2024. That gives GunVoters ample time to find and promote primary challengers for all of these compromisers.

The final two Republican compromisers are Todd Young of Indiana, who has already won his primary and is expected to win an easy victory in the general, even though his Democratic opponent looks pretty strong, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who has a primary in August, and actually has a solid-looking, Republican primary opponent. Alaska uses an unusual “Top 4” primary system, in which they hold an open primary, and the top 4 vote-getters move on to the general election, regardless of party affiliation, so Murkowski’s Republican Challenger, Kelly Tshibaka, is likely to make it into the general, but things get complicated from there. Taking on an incumbent is never easy, but with strong support from GunVoters, Tshibaka has a chance. Whether she can convince those GunVoters that she’s a better choice, remains to be seen. Murkowski’s done her part to drive GunVoters away from her camp, but Tshibaka will need to work to win them over to her side. We don’t know enough about her yet to make a recommendation, but invite anyone with knowledge about her, to share it with us.

The biggest problem, politically speaking, with these Republican compromise deals, is that they feed the “hopelessness” faction of pro-gun voters.

These are the folks who say that Democrats and Republicans are just “two sides of the same coin,” or that the “system’s rigged” so voting doesn’t really matter. Unfortunately, these are self-fulfilling prophecies. By abdicating their responsibilities and not getting involved in the election process, they bring about the defeat of their own ideals when they fail to vote, or only cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate with no chance of winning.

Don’t make this mistake.

Politics is a spectrum, like autism. Some politicians are far off to the edges of the scale, while others are somewhere toward the middle, and most swing like a pendulum, depending on which way the wind is blowing on a given day. It’s also a sad fact that many of them, from local City Council members to US Senators, and even Presidents, are not particularly bright. Having worked with, met with, and interviewed thousands of politicians, from all levels and all sides of the political spectrum, over the past 30+ years, I’ve been astounded by how many of them are total morons, with only one real skill – getting votes. Seriously, I would not hire some of these people to walk my dog or answer my office phones, yet they’ve somehow made their way into elected office, and in some cases, into the highest circles of power. The only good thing about these simpletons is also the primary bad thing: They’re easily manipulated. Since they have no real mind of their own, they depend heavily on other people to tell them what to say and do. If you or someone you trust are among that politician’s trusted advisors, then everything’s grand, but get a weasel in the hen house, or a politician who suddenly decides to make his own decisions, and things fall apart fast.

The sad fact is, to paraphrase Churchill, our political system is the worst ever devised, except for all of the others. It’s deeply flawed and imperfect, and it is susceptible to abuse, but it is the best available, and the more involved – and devoted to integrity – the people are, the better the system is.

Given all of that, the only way to get politicians that will vote the way you want them to vote is to first be sure that you fully understand your own political values.

What’s really important to you, and what doesn’t hit your radar? What issues are your “litmus test” issues, and how do you rank them on your personal priority list? For example, the Second Amendment might be your top priority, but you might also care about border security, abortion, economic issues, foreign affairs, etc., and the strongest supporter of the Second Amendment might be completely opposed to your position on all of your other top issues. They might be an avowed communist, or Nazi, or just a total moron on economics, or just a poor campaigner who has no chance of actually winning. So even though we often call ourselves “single-issue” voters, what we’re really saying is that our “single-issue” is a very high priority to us, but it can’t be the only criteria we look at.

Having a clear idea of your own political philosophy, is the first step to making solid choices in elections.

From there, we ideally want to work to elect politicians who completely agree with us on every issue, but that’s not very realistic, so those who agree with us on the preponderance of our highest priority issues, and who actually have a chance of winning. While there are valid reasons to tilt at windmills – to help push the debate in a certain direction, flush out charlatans, build name recognition for future races, promote a particular issue, etc. – generally, if you’re going to dedicate your precious vote, or time, money, and energy to a candidate, you want that candidate to have a chance of winning. If they are not electable, you’re giving the office to someone else.

Beyond basic issues and electability, there’s the issue of party and majorities. For example, right now, the US Senate is evenly divided, giving Democrats the functional majority, because they can count on Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties in their favor. That means the Senate floor is controlled by Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and that’s a bad thing for gun owners. This November, that majority could shift, but it could be very close, and much depends on what happens between now and Election Day. With that reality, it could come down to Lisa Murkowski being the one-vote difference in whether Democrats or Republicans control the Senate. Would GunVoters rather retain the backstabber and get Schumer out of his position of control, or fire the backstabber and keep Schumer in power? Personally, I’d prefer to fire Schumer and withhold my wrath for Murkowski for another day, but there are a whole lot of GunVoters whom I doubt could be convinced to push in that direction by me or anyone else.

The most important thing for GunVoters to remember though, is that, while 15 Republicans crossed over to support this bad legislation in the Senate, and 14 did the same in the House, 50 Democratic Senators and 220 Democratic Representatives also supported it, and most of them were complaining that it didn’t go far enough.

Gabby Giffords And Mark Kelly
Gabby Giffords And Mark Kelly

GunVoters are very good at punishing backstabbers and turncoats, but we need to be better at taking on our real enemies, like Mark Kelly, the co-founder of the Giffords gun control group. He’s up for reelection in Arizona, and he should be beatable, and beating him should be GunVoters’ number one objective this year.

The Knox Update

Politics vs. Reality: Elections & Politicians That Stink

Tombstone, Arizona – -(Ammoland.com)- Almost 20 years ago, I wrote an article denouncing the practice of voting for the “lesser of two evils.”

In it, I focused on the idea that the lesser of two evils is still evil, and I argued that voters should always vote their conscience. I was naive. In the years since writing that article, I’ve been up to my eyeballs in politics, worked on dozens of campaigns, and come to some very different conclusions regarding who to support when.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a single-issue, no compromise GunVoter and advocate for the Second Amendment.

That doesn’t mean that I vote and advocate based solely on what the candidate has said or done regarding “my” issue. On the contrary, I’ve learned to think, advocate, and vote strategically. I’ve learned the importance of looking at the bigger picture, and voting based on what will best advance or protect what matters most to me. Often that best course turns out to be to hold my nose and support a candidate who’s not fully (or even a little bit) on my side.

I know that this statement will set off a wave of expletives among a wide group of my readers, and those of you who just declared me to be an idiot are exactly who this article is written for, so please keep reading.

 

Ideological purity is a wonderful thing, but it’s pretty useless if it means you lose the battle and the war.

In politics today, it seems that everything is absolute black or white, with no shades of gray. Either you are on my side 100%, or you are the enemy. Either you agree with everything I say, or you are evil. Either you toe the line that I have drawn in the sand, or you are a traitor.

This sort of divisiveness and intolerance has always been with us, but it has come into full flower with the progressive “cancel culture” of the left, then, somewhat ironically, picked up steam among hardcore Trump supporters – and the virulent anti-Trumpers. Along the way, it has become a badge of honor among some Second Amendment advocates.
The practical result is that GunVoters will often engage in self-defeating behaviors.

It’s an unfortunate reality that most politicians think of the Second Amendment as just another political issue, not a moral issue or matter of core principles. As such, they often say ignorant things that drive committed rights activists crazy. That’s not a reason to throw those politicians under the bus though. It’s often just a matter of lack of education, and/or poor choice of advisors. While we’d all prefer that our politicians and political candidates be well-versed in the history and principles of the Second Amendment, the fact is that few actually are. They hold a general appreciation for guns and gun owners (or GunVoters), but when it comes to details, they frequently rely on “policy experts” to guide them through the minefields.

Unfortunately, there are a whole lot of professional, “conservative,” campaign and political advisors who just don’t understand the Second Amendment and GunVoters, and who give really bad advice on the subject. It’s no small chore getting past those advisors and capturing the ear of a politician (or their top aides), but it can be done, as long as the bridges haven’t been burned.

Regardless of the particular policy positions of individual politicians, we must always look at every race in the broader context of party politics, legislative majorities, and the overall potential impact of that race in the broader scheme of things. Then we must vote in accordance with what is best for our broad objectives. It’s not about rewarding or punishing a particular politician, but rather about how we can best advance the cause of individual rights.

Even if a particular politician is totally committed to bad policies that we disagree with, and can’t be convinced of the error of their ways, that doesn’t mean they can’t be useful – for a time. The fact that the Democratic Party has made gun control a priority, and its support a litmus test for its candidates, makes it difficult for GunVoters to ever support Democratic candidates, even when the Republican in a particular race is just as opposed to our rights as the Democrat, or even more so because in state legislatures and Congress, party majorities matter – a lot.

As I have often repeated in recent years, a RINO or two in the midst of a herd of elephants is a nuisance. But a RINO or two in the middle of a herd of Jackasses is a serious problem. Keeping anti-rights extremists like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer out of control and in the minority, is a very big deal (as the past year has demonstrated), and if accomplishing that means we have to support weak or downright hostile Republicans, then that’s what we have to do. And if it means throwing some support behind incumbent Democrats like Manchin and Sinema, who don’t really support our rights, but who refuse to kowtow to their leadership on critical issues like abolishing the filibuster, then we might have to do that too.

I know some readers are jumping up and down right now yelling about Libertarian candidates, and I’ll agree that, if there’s a Libertarian candidate who has any chance of winning, I will support them over a weak Republican. The problem is that the Libertarian candidate rarely has any chance at all of even making the ballot, much less winning. They don’t have the critical mass and party infrastructure behind them to seriously compete with Republicans and Democrats in most races. Too many voters are committed to voting for R’s and D’s, and Libertarians rarely find a way past that obstacle.

I personally think it would serve Libertarians well to abandon their third-party aspirations, and instead run their candidates as Republicans or Democrats, working to carve out niches within those two parties. With the Big D or Big R by their names, those candidates can have a chance of actually winning and actually making a difference.

Too often, our folks tend to look exclusively at individual candidates and lose sight of the bigger picture. I don’t want a turncoat or an idiot representing me, but I recognize that often the alternative is much worse. Trump gave us a ban on bump stocks and rhetoric in support of “red flag” laws, but he also gave us three fairly conservative Justices on the Supreme Court. Does anyone believe that gun owners would be in a stronger position had Hillary Clinton won in 2016?

The time to remove anti-rights Republicans is during the primaries. Once a candidate crosses into the general election, GunVoters must set personal feelings aside and support the candidate that will do the least harm to our greater cause. That’s not always easy, but the alternative can be devastating.

The Knox Update

You Are the Gun Lobby & You Need to Act Like It

2 Comments

With all of the hubbub over the mess at the NRA, now seems like a good time to remind everyone that YOU are the Gun Lobby.

This is a theme I have come back to again and again in the 13+ years that I have been writing about Second Amendment issues and leading The Firearms Coalition, and even before that. In a speech on the Arizona Capitol grounds earlier this year, I said that the gun lobby “is not a bunch of overpaid suits in Washington D.C. … if the NRA disappeared tomorrow, the Gun Lobby would still be just as powerful, because it’s not the NRA, it’s NRA members and tens of millions of other dedicated patriots just like you.”

In retrospect, those comments, which were very similar to comments I made at a rally in the Capitol Rotunda in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania over a decade ago, seem somewhat prophetic, especially considering Wayne LaPierre’s $276k clothing bills, but the point has always been true. All of the NRA’s power, prestige, money, and influence flow directly from you and me and people like us. While the NRA is a useful tool, it is not the source of power or influence. You are.

It is particularly important for everyone to understand that the ugly mess facing the NRA today has the organization crippled, and it will remain crippled for some time into the foreseeable future.

But the gun lobby must continue to be strong.

Even if the NRA “leadership” allows the last of our dollars to bleed out into the pockets of lawyers and charlatans, even if the organization allows itself to be torn down by politicians and bureaucrats, the gun lobby must continue to be strong.

With the NRA distracted and in disarray, it’s critical for you, the Gun Lobby, to take personal responsibility for protecting your rights. You can’t rely on the NRA, or any other group, to do the heavy lifting for you. You must roll up your sleeves and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your neighbors to ensure that the radical rights opponents don’t flush your children’s and grandchildren’s birthright down the toilet.

After decades of a slow erosion of our rights, and occasionally regaining small bits of ground, we stand on the brink. The slippery slope is only inches wide, with nothing but a sheer cliff beyond it. The Democrats have given their party fully over to a “progressive” philosophy of total government control and citizen subservience, with a government monopoly on arms being one of their primary goals. Until saner heads regain control of that party, it is critical that they are defeated.

We, as defenders of freedom and lovers of liberty, can no longer afford to hang back and lend our support only to the cream of the solid, pro-rights candidates. At this point, the Democratic Party has taken that luxury away from us. Now our only option is to work for their defeat, regardless of the individual stands of their candidates or their opponents. Right now, it’s all about majorities – in Congress, in state legislatures, and on county boards and city councils. Even in states with low crime, and strong traditions of firearm freedom, like Maine and Vermont, Democrat majorities are pushing agendas of draconian gun control, simply because they can, and because Bloomberg and the Giffords’ group keep dumping millions into local elections, in support of radical Democrat, rights restrictors.

These assaults on our rights must be answered with votes. Gun owners can’t rely on the NRA to do it for us. We never could, but it’s more true and urgent now than ever before.
Too many times our guys got mad at Republicans for failing to deliver on promises, or for foolishly making concessions to the rights opponents, and stomped off in a huff, refusing to vote, or voting for third-party candidates with zero chance of winning. That’s how we got eight years of Barack Obama, and most recently, it’s how we lost the House of Representatives in 2018.

That absence from the field provided proof to Bloomberg and Democrat strategists that the power of the gun lobby and GunVoters was just a myth. They successfully painted GunVoter frustration with broken promises, as apathy and impotence, because we allowed vocal, gun control advocates to be elected with little opposition from our disgruntled troops.

They think we’re powerless, and they think that without big bucks and coordination from the NRA, we can’t be serious players in the political arena. It’s up to you to prove them wrong.

Political power lies in the ability to impact politicians’ most precious asset: the ability to be elected. Conventional wisdom says that can only be done with huge amounts of money spent on advertising, but conventional wisdom is wrong. We don’t need advertising, because we have the numbers we need already. All we need is for our fellow gun owners and rights advocates to stand up and get involved. Every one of us must engage in the battle, working for the candidates who are going up against the radical gun control zealots — defeating the party of gun control, by working for the party that isn’t dedicated to taking away our guns.

We must do this, even if the Republican candidate isn’t great on our issue, because right now, Democrats have declared war on our rights. The only way to change their position, and to wake up the squishy Republicans, is for GunVoters to turn out in droves, putting up signs, making phone calls, walking neighborhoods, and making sure that everyone in their family, their friends, their entire sphere of influence, is informed and activated to defeat those who oppose the Bill of Rights.

We didn’t make this a partisan fight, Democrats did. We’ll never make them change their minds by sitting on the sidelines or punishing weak-kneed Republicans by going hunting on Election Day. We must get busy, get involved, and demonstrate in November that the gun lobby is indeed alive and well, and we won’t tolerate open assault on our rights.

The Knox Update

Ignorance is Bliss-tering

The Knox Report

From the Firearms Coalition

Ignorance is Bliss — Until the Pain Begins

 

By Jeff Knox

 

(November 20, 2008) The reality of the November 4 elections is beginning to settle in and the more people learn about the choices they’ve made, the more concerned they become.  It turns out that the McCain campaign’s “Celebrity” commercial was spot-on; Barack Obama was famous for being famous and the masses failed to look behind the curtain or into the promises.  What Alan Korwin calls the “lame-stream media” was complicit in the charade as they fawned over Obama and the Democrats while trashing McCain, Palin, the Republicans in Congress, and George W. Bush.  The two major parties were also complicit as they have locked up the election process and locked out many highly qualified and worthwhile candidates and ideas.  But in the end, it all comes down to the American people and how much attention and consideration they are giving to the health of The Republic. 

The simple fact is that the vast majority of citizens pay absolutely no attention to matters of politics and a good percentage of the rest pay only superficial attention.  Gunowners turn out for elections at about the same rate as non-gunowners and often have little or no idea about the candidates’ positions on firearms issues.  While millions of serious “gun-people” buy Shotgun News and other gun publications almost religiously, many of them never even look at the “political columns” like this one and choose to remain oblivious to the erosion of their rights and the threats certain political philosophies represent.

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