JD Vance’s acceptance of prohibitionist terms, his failure to correct egregious errors and outright lies, and his avoidance of elaborating to voters on why the right to keep and bear arms is the keystone of freedom, show that when it comes to effective advocacy, Republican politicians all too often come up short. [More]
There were all kinds of missed opportunities, unnecessary concessions, and lies left unchallenged.
“Vance could have replied that handguns, shotguns, and rifles, including semiautomatics (AR-15-type rifles and semi-auto military-style rifles) are commonly sold to civilians in Finland with a license.”
You may be expecting too much of any politician. I’ve been a 2A advocate for decades, and if you asked me out of the blue what the gun laws were in Finland, I’d have no idea, certainly not on my feet in a debate.
People who are not in gun careers simply aren’t subject matter experts on guns. Knoll’s Law of Media Accuracy describes the consequences of this in media. Politics has the same problem. I’ve seen trade reps school a state Fire Marshal on what his regulations required with respect to their industry — he was consistently wrong, because he didn’t have to live with those regs every day.
Can you think of one politician who is an exception? Possibly Brandon Herrera — but he didn’t get elected.
The real bottom line is that Trump, Vance, and most GOP politicians are uncomfortable with what the Founders wrote when they penned the Second Amendment, and they do not want to have the “well regulated militia” that was envisioned by Josiah Quincy II in 1774.
They’re only somewhat less so than the Democrats.
And that’s what my Cajun friend would call “a true fact.”
Most every uni-party participant would happily see the personal arms issue go away; preferably via SCOTUS revision of prior decisions tepidly supporting such followed up by full throated CONgressional support of legislation to make acquisition so difficult none but the insiders can comply. Much as the CONgress accedes to EPA/etc. rules making gas engines unable to comply and pushing the proles to EVs.
2A proponents do not have enough ‘friends in hi places’ to maintain this key part of our Constitutional Republic.