Top Ten Threats to Gun Rights in 2018

Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election was a huge win for gun owners and the gun rights community. The impact of his victory was immediate, due to the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, a devout defender of Second Amendment rights to the United States Supreme Court. Since then, however, not a single pro-gun bill has moved through Congress, leaving gun voters waiting for President Trump to fulfill his campaign promises.

The good news, however, is there is zero chance of gun control gaining traction with President Trump in office. At the state level, however, is another story. Far too many Americans live under “one gun per month” purchase restrictions, or can’t purchase certain guns because they resemble military rifles. In some states, the passage of gun control bills remains a constant threat. In other states, meanwhile, complacency has taken hold, leaving anti-gun leaders with a small but viable foothold.

As we move into 2018, however, the biggest threat to gun rights and the Second Amendment remains gun owners themselves. Gun owners threaten the right to bear arms by being willing to accept an assault weapons ban to protect their particular shooting hobby, unwilling to help fight anti-gun groups and legislators, or from through merely being lazy. It’s a problem that appears to be never-ending, and one that just might create a favorable environment for the passage of gun control measures.

To better help gun owners willing to put in the time and effort required to defend the Second Amendment, we’re once again listing the Top 10 threats to our most valuable civil right. We can only hope that the liberty-minded among us will rise to the challenge and fight to keep the private ownership of firearms from being destroyed, and that our grandchildren’s children will still enjoy the right to bear arms.

10. Donald Trump and the Republican Party – The clock is ticking on Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s campaign promises to the pro-gun community. After all their rhetoric attacking Hillary Clinton for her record on guns, President Trump hasn’t asked Congress to move a pro-gun bill, and Congressional leadership hasn’t attempted to move a pro-gun bill on their own.

There is still time for the Republicans to do the right thing for gun owners, but things are not promising at this point. They may squander a golden opportunity to pass meaningful pro-gun reform, and letting a chance like this slip through their fingers might set gun rights back for years to come. Unless Trump and the Republicans act, and act quickly, it might be years before there is another chance to make America’s gun laws great again.

9. Everytown for Gun Safety – Modern Gun Control at its Insidious Worst – The new face of gun control in America is the epitome of a Trojan horse organization. On one hand they claim to support "reasonable" gun-control schemes, and many of the leaders claim to be gun owners. Yet, their agenda calls for an assault weapons ban far more restrictive than the 1994 Clinton ban, taking away gun rights from certain veterans and sick people without due process, and an end to all private firearms sales.

Everytown’s agenda is the same tired agenda that’s been at the heart of gun control since the 1960’s, one that has failed to lower crime or stop spree killers in states where it has been enacted. Yet, Everytown continues to push the fallacious claim that banning guns based on how they look, ending legal concealed carry and limiting private gun sales will lead to a crime-free utopia.

8. Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg - Despite the establishment media’s claims that the National Rifle Association spent its way to prominence, it’s the deep pockets of leftist anti-gun zealots like Bloomberg who spend, spend, and spend. Based on that, Bloomberg makes the list, yet again, due to his willingness to use his fortune in an attempt to destroy Second Amendment rights. Bloomberg continues to bankroll gun control groups, ballot initiative attempts, and single-handedly keeps the gun control movement alive in many states.

Instead of exposing Bloomberg for paying for access and using money as a political billy-club, the establishment media continues to attack the National Rifle Association for buying influence, despite the fact that the NRA has millions of members, while Bloomberg’s groups have a membership that seems to number in the hundreds, or less. If the establishment media had a shred of intellectually honesty they would expose Bloomberg’s dealings. But they don’t, and they won't. Instead they will continue to let Bloomberg hide behind the curtain.

7. “That” Gun Owner – We all know a gun owner who refuses to get a concealed carry license because he insists the Constitution gives him the right to carry a concealed handgun. While most gun owners, and the gun lobby, agree the constitution should be enough, that won’t stop the legal system from tagging an otherwise honest citizen as a felon if they are caught carrying a handgun without a license. It isn’t right, or just, that gun owners have to petition to the government in order to carry a gun for self-defense, but sadly, it’s reality in today’s world.

“That” gun owner also likes to send belligerent letters to elected officials that do more harm to gun fights than good, and is so aggressive and militant that it alienates new shooters and otherwise reasonable non-gun owners. While attending pro-gun events, “that” gun owner carries provocative signs that read, “I don’t dial 911,” or “from my cold dead hands” - an image that anti-gun groups are more than willing to exploit, and which furthers the misconception pushed by the media that gun owners live on the fringes of society.

6. Anyone using the phrase "Stand Your Ground" – It started as a pro-freedom rallying cry designed to help law-abiding citizens take the initiative back from the criminal element. However, the unfortunate fact is that the anti-gun side won the battle over the phrase “stand your ground.” In Ohio, for example, when a bill is tagged as “stand your ground” legislation, it immediately becomes poison to middle-of-the-road legislators and is doomed to failure. The pro-gun lobby needs to accept that the public relations battle over the phrase was lost during the George Zimmerman trial. That doesn’t make it right, nor does it make reforming self-defense laws to eliminate the duty to retreat any less important. But, it does mean that until “stand your ground” is no longer part of the political consciousness, the needed reforms are doomed to failure.

Just as we know the Constitution should be all that’s needed by a law-abiding citizen to justify carrying a concealed gun, we know that a law abiding citizen shouldn’t ever have to retreat from a common thug. Yet there is more work to do in order to change the way the American justice system sees both issues. As long as the gun lobby hangs their hat on “stand your ground” legislation, they will fail again and again and again.

5. Open Carry Zealots – The average open carry practitioner is a huge benefit to the pro-gun community. By carrying a gun openly, it shows people that a person with a gun isn’t always a person with criminal intent. It’s a message that needs to be delivered and is vitally important to defense of the Second Amendment.

A problem arises, however, when open carry zealots use legal open carry to bait law enforcement officers into a verbal altercation. The internet is full of videos that show snarky open carry zealots purposely aggravating law enforcement officers and then acting shocked with the police aren’t perfectly polite and understanding. Non-gun owners don’t see the videos as an example of law enforcement being exposed as anti-gun, but instead see a gun owner acting like a jerk.

That isn’t always accurate, but the videos, give middle-Americans the impression that gun advocates are overly officious jerks. There is a time and place to confront the misdeeds of law enforcement when it comes to how they treat open carry practitioners. Baiting an officer and then posting the video to the internet, however, only serves to play into the myth that all gun owners are anti-social, confrontational, and afraid of authority.

4. The Next Spree Killer – Few events send spineless pro-gun candidates, weak-willed gun owners and cowardly elected officials into panic mode quicker than a spree killing. Instead of standing up to the establishment media and pointing out cases where an armed victim stopped a spree killer, gun advocates resort to defense mode, a weak-willed reaction that plays into the way establishment media outlets cover mass murder.

3. The Apathetic Gun Owner – The apathetic gun owner is a fixture on this list. Year after year after year after year, groups like Buckeye Firearms Association try to turn the most powerful untapped political resource in America into an unstoppable political movement - without success. It is a testament to the support for gun-rights in America that the pro-gun lobby succeeds despite fighting with one hand tied behind their back.

Sadly, it will probably take another Clinton-style "assault" weapons ban to energize the millions of silent gun owners. We know this because that’s exactly what it took to shake them from their doldrums the first time. When the Democrats rammed through Clinton’s pet gun control scheme, it led to the Republican takeover of Congress for the first time in 40 years, and cost Al Gore the presidency when he lost his home state of Tennessee to George W Bush.

Since then, pro-gun reform has taken root. We now have legal concealed carry in all 50 states and the Supreme Court finally ruled that the Second Amendment affirms an individual right to keep and bear arms. As the pro-gun victories piled up, the complacency among gun owners grew, and continues to grow. We can only hope that by the time the apathetic gun owner wakes it isn’t too late.

2. Justice Anthony Kennedy – Kennedy continues to float hints that he will retire from the U.S. Supreme Court in the near future. The only problem is he hasn’t defined what he means by the term “near future,” leaving the political community in limbo and the make-up of the Supreme Court in question. Kennedy is often the swing vote for major court decisions and was the deciding vote in the Heller case that ruled the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms.

If he waits too long to retire and President Donald Trump is voted out of office, it can lead to a liberal takeover of the court. If that happens, it might lead to a situation that gives a liberal court the chance to overturn Heller – or worse. If that happens, all of the pro-gun victories since the 1994 Republican Revolution can be undone in a single stroke of a pen.

1. Unproductive A-Rated/Endorsed Candidates - Few, if any, threats to the Second Amendment are as insidious as the politician who says the right things about guns on the campaign trail, and who votes for innocuous gun bills, all the while working behind the scenes to scuttle more "controversial" pro-gun reform. In Ohio, for example, there are more A-rated members of the legislature than at almost any other time in the last 35 years. Add in a governor that was endorsed by several pro-gun organizations and it should mean easy sailing for pro-gun legislation. Yet the self-proclaimed pro-gun stalwarts have failed to move a single bill since the last legislative session ended in 2016.

They have excuses, of course, that usually start with laying blame at the feet of leadership like the Ohio House Speaker or the Senate President, who determine when bills are scheduled for debate. What they hope voters will forget is that legislators elect their leaders, and can remove them at any time. So if leadership isn’t moving bills as the rank and file see fit, they can vote them out of office.

Another tactic is to delay voting on the promised gun bills until the post-election lame duck session. This allows legislators to take advantage of their A-rating without actually voting for, or against, a pro-gun bill prior to facing the voters. Once the election is over, the gun lobby is usually told the support for the original gun bill has faded and the legislation needs to have most the meaningful changes removed to secure being passed After waiting most of the two year legislative session, gun owners are forced to swallow a watered down version of what they were promised.

Let’s hope that this year the Top 10 Threats to Gun Rights will prove to be weaker than we expect, and that A-rated/endorsed candidates finally live up to their billing. Otherwise we’re left to suffer the same fate in the upcoming legislative session as we did in the past. That holds true at both the state and federal level, where both legislative bodies boast a majority of A-rated /endorsed candidates.

If they fail to act, we have to ask whether they remain the top threat to gun rights for 2018, or if gun owners who fall for what proved to be phony promises are the real problem.

Gerard Valentino is the Buckeye Firearms Foundation Secretary and is a former US Army Military Intelligence professional and Signals Officer in the Ohio National Guard. He teaches the Ohio Concealed Carry class for ACA Personal Defense.