Why did we lose on Question 1 if we have the
truth on our side? Answer: You can’t
beat someone who cheats.
Bloomberg and his founded groups had every advantage that we
did not have; they had money, a complicit media to assist them, and an army of
deluded liberals more than willing to do their bidding. We know of the
shenanigans at polling places and collecting ballots. We heard the rumors of
petition signature gathers being bused in from Washington as soon as their
initiative passed. We’ve heard all the lies.
"...these people [anti-gun reformers] are always well
organized and working in harmony and with great enthusiasm, while the simple
advocates of the thing that is to be reformed out of existence are unable to
sense the danger that impends, and neglect to defend their rights until they
suddenly find themselves deprived of them."
Question 1’s effects will hurt blacks, Hispanics, and
women—the target focus of the left—exactly those who benefit most from private
gun sales. While the left crows about voter IDs deterring potential
marginalized voters, they demand that those same marginalized persons deal with
a complicated, confusing process they are not likely to understand, if be aware
of at all. But it’s not about reality or the harmful side effects, it’s about
gun control.
TL:DR version
- Massive outspending by Everytown/Bloomberg
- Apathetic gun owners who did nothing more than vote and post pictures on Facebook
- California ex-pats and uneducated voters who believed the "yes" commercials
Gaming
Democracy
We need to look at why the initiatives are being used to
push gun control. Initiatives are not
subject to party-line votes in the legislature or vetoes on the governor’s
desk. In a way, initiatives bypass the checks-and-balances system to take the
matter directly to the public. Direct democracy was seen by our founding
fathers as mob rule. Wisely, they instituted a representative republican form
of government that we know today. While initiatives are great tools for the
voters to change things, they are subject to abuse.
“Ballot measures bypass the carefully designed deliberative
model, and terrifyingly favor the deep-pocketed individuals who can throw the
largest amount of money into advertising their cause in the best possible
light. Put bluntly, these referendum processes allow even the most blatantly
unconstitutional and unenforceable laws to be bought by the highest bidder.” (source)
Nevadans for Background Checks, the supposedly “grassroots”
proponents of the initiative, was nothing more than a façade of Everytown for
Gun Safety. They were at work in Washington, Oregon, and in Maine as well.
If enough people go along with something, right or wrong, it
becomes law. Many criticize the initiative system as being inflexible;
poorly-written bills cannot be changed or deficiencies corrected. Initiatives have emerged as a favorite of
gun control proponents because they bypass checks-and-balances. No congress
or governor can stand in the way. All it takes is votes. And lots and lots of
money.
Partisan politics is replaced with sound-bite politics.
Let’s face it, people today have too much going on in their lives to truly care
about a system that often changes despite their wishes or input. Americans feel
disconnected from their political process and don’t spend a great deal of time
educating themselves on the topics.
"It is quite clear that the greater park of the public
knows little or nothing about the merits of the question presented. As in all
such matters the bulk of the populace will doubtless remain inarticulate,
unorganized, and incapable of self-expression. It will probably in the future
as in the past continue to be a prey of vociferous groups which make up in
noise what they lack in principles and intelligence which frequently succeed in
accomplishing their designs because the public as a whole has no adequate
method of defending itself and protecting its interests."
"It appeals to a considerable number of people who know
nothing about guns, and it is swallowed whole by that portion of the public who
do not think about what they read or hear but who are ready to accept almost
any strong and readymade idea which is handed to them for consumption in tablet
form."
A law that flaunts the constitution passed by a margin of
about 9,000 people who voted largely out of ignorance and deception is why the
Founding Fathers eschewed direct democracy. Less than 1% is still a loss, but
is far from a mandate and the closest difference in any of the Bloomberg
initiative races.
Where an inflexible initiative and short blurbs about the
issue go wrong is they turn the initiative into a form of mob rule. You’re
either for it or against it; there is no middle ground and no mediation. If a
poorly written initiative is passed, as many, many problems with Washington’s
I-594 background check law have been found, there is no remedy, aside from the
courts, to address those issues in the short term. Once the people have spoken,
there can be argument with the law that they have passed, for good or for bad.
Money
The only major donor to reverse course was Steve Wynn, but
it was too little, too late. Let’s hope he can atone for his mistake by making
an equally large donation to the Nevada Firearms Coalition. As you can see from
the Secretary of State page, many donors, including Nevadans with more money
than sense, helped by this feel-good piece of tyranny.
“Nevada in particular has become an expensive battleground.
Bloomberg has personally donated nearly $10 million to the effort there, and
Nevadans for Background Checks had collected $14.3 million as of Oct. 18. That
is nearly triple the $4.8 million that the leading opposition group, NRA
Nevadans for Freedom, had received, all from the NRA.”
In fact, as of Nov. 4th, the totals were $15,852,790.11 contributed,
per the Secretary
of State, including $3.5 million from Michael Bloomberg himself.
Casinos, attorneys, and various gaming and Vegas business
people poured tons of their own money into supporting the initiative. Why?
Background checks have nothing to do with casinos and it’s doubtful that they
are concerned with stopping violence in the Valley, as what happens far off The
Strip is unlikely to affect tourism. The answer is that supporting a gun control
initiative shows obedience to the casino Sheriff Lombardo. It’s classic Nevada
backscratching; if the casinos support gun control, which
Lombardo
supported in private, he is likely to be more favorable to
their security needs.
Why
Nevada and what’s next?
Far more is at stake than just Nevada. Rural states with
large, Democrat-leaning urban populations; Colorado, Washington, Oregon,
Nevada, and Maine were targeted successfully because of demographics. Gun control supporters think they can win
here and start a domino effect across the nation because they are taking
advantage of Nevada’s composition.
Comparing to the neck-and-neck race in Maine as the results
came in, Nevada shows a deep divide. Clark
County, with its urban population with a huge percentage of liberal-inclined
California voters, swayed the vote. The common thread with defeat is a
tradition of shooting and hunting. There was a similar urban vs. rural pattern
in Washington in 2014. A lack of knowledge of guns is what equals a fear of it
and susceptibility to accepting gun control. The large percentage of Black
and Hispanic voters who tend to paradoxically vote for gun control while being
victimized disproportionately by crime also probably helped this latest
infringement “win.”
In Nevada, over ¾ of the state’s population lives in Clark
County, derisively known as East California. Essentially, it’s gaming the
system. With their millions of dollars the small TV and newspaper market can be
dominated with adverting that supports gun control. There is no large,
spread-out rural population that thinks differently which can balance the vote.
Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, and Virginia are the next soft targets because
they are so similar.
Why
didn’t the NRA stop this?
The NRA was the only major group to fight the initiative.
The Nevada Firearms Coalition (including its PAC Nevadans for State Gun Rights)
suffers from low membership and limited funds. Nevada’s population is highly
transient, largely disconnected from the community as a whole, and highly
individualistic. The incredible narrowing of the lead of Question 1 in the polls
and the close vote show that the true grassroots efforts by individual gun
owners and NVFAC members showed that the Silver State’s gun owners are
motivated to protect their rights.
One criticism I will offer of the NRA is the failure to
anticipate and counter Bloomberg’s strategy early on (let’s face it, the
Bloomberg groups are the driving forces in American gun control now). Back when
the ballot initiative strategy debuted in Washington during the 2014 election
seasons, the NRA leadership should have fought hard in the early stages of
petition gathering. Clearly, the NRA and gun owners have learned as this battle
has gone on; Nevada may have just been an unfortunate narrow loss, but perhaps
Arizona might benefit from the lessons learned.
Larger is the issue of state-level groups and individual
involvement. Nevada’s individual gun owners made the most of what we had, but it
wasn’t enough. Sadly, gun owners don’t view themselves as a community as do
members of political parties or religious groups. They don’t have the same
belief of the actual volunteer anti-gunners who truly believe they are doing
good and, ignorant of history and human nature, that additional laws and
restrictions will stop violence. Gun owners tend to be individualistic and conservative,
and so they generally don’t involve themselves in the political process as they
view it as interfering with other’s rights and viewpoints.
Nor do gun owners have the same craven tenacity to inflict
their political will upon others at all costs. Unfortunately, the dismissive
attitude, especially early on “It won’t pass; the NRA will defeat it” cost us
in the end. Apathy on the part of gun owners was the killer. If you own guns and voted “yes”, didn’t
vote, or this is the first you’re hearing of this: fuck you, you are part of
the problem. Yes, we swear now. Get off your ass, get involved, educate people,
and do more than virtually masturbate online about how you are going to wage
civil war against gun controllers.
Posting
a photo of your holster on Facebook with an “I voted” sticker on it isn’t
helping. Who did you educate? How much did you donate? How many
protests did you go to? Did you vote Democrat in the legislative races (more
gun control there)? There is only about two-dozen serious, hardcore supporters
of gun rights in Nevada (in this battle and more). We all fought in different
ways; some on the phone, some knocking on doors, some hitting the voting sites,
and some educating online (as I have since 2014). Why didn’t you give/do more?
If we had double the core of activists, we might have won.
Activism is more than just putting pictures and bitching on
social media. For those of you who did nothing more than vote, you bear this
failure upon your shoulders. Liberty
needs intense active support to succeed and nothing more than laziness to turn
into tyranny.
Why do
people vote for such garbage laws?
Ignorance
is the easy answer. Most simply don’t know better. As for the rest, there is an
unwillingness to admit that (relatively speaking) nothing can prevent violence.
Perhaps the prohibitionists cannot even comprehend the nature of evil and
therefore look not to the failings of the soul, but to the failings in the law,
police, government, etc. Rather than being an unpredictable, uncontrollable
tragedy, had just one particular thing been done, it could have stopped
the crime. That “one thing” is often another law, which they naively expect
criminals to obey.
Anti-gun
voters and politicians see the law as some sort of supernatural guarantee. It
is an often empty guarantee of safety through deterrence via the threat of
punishment. Even if the unpredictable nature of man claims a life, the law is a
“promise” that the killer will face justice. Whether that promise is kept or
not doesn’t matter; like an ever-forgiving cuckold, liberal and anti-gun voters
are ever willing to forgive those that betray their words. Passing a law is
“doing something”, whether the action truly achieves its stated objective or
not. Anti-gun laws like Question 1 are only symbolic, talismanic acts that will
temporarily absolve them of the collective societal guilt of violent crime.
So why do
people put faith in gun control laws? Laws are predictable. They are black and
white, firm, finite answers. It provides a certainty to them. Gun control is
just an easy answer; a tool to dissuade the honest and perhaps add an extra
penalty, if that, to criminals. The nitty gritty facts that existing illegal possession/acquisition
laws are not enforced escapes them or are of little consequence as long as they
“feel good.”
The mere
knowledge that a law against the action exists is their comfort. They presume
the law to always be right and bulwark against evil. The law should hold terror
for those who do wrong; almost like garlic or a crucifix to a vampire. Ever
hold a copy of the penal codes? Often it’s thick and heavy book, far more so
than the Bible (and less forgiving), even though their onion skin pages are so
similar. Gun control is a religion without a god and supporters congregants who
neither read nor pray over their scriptures, but merely sing the hymns with
empty hearts.
Passing a
law will not assuage their grief. Like any other empty gesture, it is a short,
hollow comfort that is rarely ever borne out with positive results. Evil a
phenomenon that cannot be restrained by law, only met with counter force. Like
a flood, evil will constantly seek the cracks in whatever dam we erect and
spill out.
The
anti-gun cannot accept that evil men are incapable of being restrained. Because
they cannot accept this simple truth and abhor the reality that violence can
only truly stop determined violence. This denial leads them to believe that if
there are enough laws and restrictions, the chains and fetters will be too
heavy to resist. In the end, it is a fundamental mistaken understanding of
human nature.
Success
The
success of this fight is that we fought so hard and well despite overwhelming
odds. While privately we admitted we would probably lose, we became cautiously
optimistic towards the end. Our optimism was not misplaced despite the loss.
9,000 votes; less than 1%. We narrowed it down to that from a near 60/40
defeat. This margin was secured almost entirely by true grassroots efforts. The
NRA only provided commercials, facilities, and materials. It was the involved
gun rights activists who made Everytown and Bloomberg fight like the devil to
get their money’s worth.
Their
loss in Maine and the narrow margin here does not bode well for them elsewhere.
Had the NRA and the apathetic gun owners understood what was at stake and how
to fight, we could have easily handed them their asses. Perhaps the next states
in the antis’ sights can deliver the knockout punch.
Conclusion
Gun owners are now alert to the schemes of the enemies of
freedom, but it came at the cost of our private property rights, the continued
erosion of gun rights, and another major step towards national gun
registration. An uneducated half of the electorate, too stupid to think
critically or investigate the issue deeper, brought tyranny upon the other half
and unwittingly upon themselves as well. Until educated voters vote with their minds and not with their
emotions, gun control fanatics will find the gullible to take their bait.
Despite losing Question 1 and the legislature, we still have
a Republican governor and Republican control of the federal government. We
should now work to make sure the Democrat legislature’s attempts at more gun
control are brutally suppressed and vetoed as well as getting national
concealed carry reciprocity and reductions in NFA items (silencers, short
barreled rifles/shotguns) at the federal level.
