This is from a Second Amendment Foundation e-mail;
“With a track record like Barack Obama has on health care, we don’t want the president getting involved in gun care or firearms safety.”
Anyone?
If your IMMEDIATE reaction wasn’t something along the lines of; “Wait! The president’s track record is irrelevant. The second amendment (and more importantly the ideal of liberty) prohibits politicians getting involved in such things” then you have some reflectin’ to do.
What the statement implies, whether its originators know it or not, is that the “right” president would be more than welcome to tell us how to do things, pushing us around, meddling with our lives using intimidation and coercion as though humans were no better than livestock.
There is no “right person” (or group of people), regardless of their track record, who can properly use coercion, wielding the Ring of Power so to speak.
I donate regularly to the SAF, and they do a lot of good work, but that statement is just sad. Plus it is simply wrong on its face– If you understand the meaning of the word “We”, then yes, certainly; “We” DOES want Obama in charge of our guns.
I agree that politicians should not be coercing us. If they could, I would like to point out that the POTUS and VPOTUS clowns and Democrat Congressional idiots would be unable to do anything coherent with firearms. The steaming pile of fail that they would create would probably set back the anti-gun, anti-freedom elements for a hundred years.
Can we please put the adults back in charge now?
Lyle, you’re right. Did you write the SAF to point out that they were implicitly endorsing the position of the bad guys with that statement?
Not in this case. I’ve written them before and I don’t recall having gotten a reply. It’s not my organization– They do their thing and I give them a little bit of money for it. I figure that if they’re interested, they’ll find it right here along with readers’ comments on the subject, which is probably more interesting than one e-mail from some crazy shmuck in Idaho.
I too donated a bunch to them. Then they went off the rails w/ their support of Manchin-Toomey and don’t seem to be able to get back on track. I keep hoping they can figure it out.
I do not, repeat, do NOT want this to be a hit piece on the SAF, please. I only bring them up because they happened to be the ones stepping into it THIS time. Tomorrow it might be me, and I would expect you to correct me on it. This is a post on concepts and principles, how words mean things, often very different things depending on who is using them, how you can always be on the lookout for meaning, and how it is essentially insane to place someone into a position of having coercive power and expect it to turn out for the good.
Well, technically, the “right person” could do a lot as far as pushing for repealing the more egregious violations of the 2nd Amendment, so there IS that. SAF does a lot more good than harm, and they have to meet people in the mindset where they are.
“…the “right person” could do a lot as far as pushing for repealing the more egregious violations of the 2nd Amendment…”
But then he’s not “in charge” of gun care at that point, is he? You are. And the bit about Obama’s “track record” (his apparent incompetence in handling the implementation of coercive “health care”) implies that someone more competent and knowledgeable, doing a better job in a government take-over, would be preferable. In fact it would be far worse than having incompetents managing the coercive system.
If my liberty must be attacked, I prefer it be attacked by incompetents. Let’s not bring up incompetent management of a coercive system as the reason you should be opposed to a particular coercive system or its manager. It’s like saying, after a rapist did an incompetent, inefficient job of carrying out a rape, that you should focus your criticism of him upon his poor performance. It’s rather beside the point isn’t it? I would think that the attempted rape would be the issue, just as the Progressives’ rape of American ideals is the issue at hand, rather than their level of competence or efficiency in carrying it out.
You don’t want your rights violated, whether it be done with or without great skill and efficiency.