The Captain’s Journal – by Herschel Smith
State Senate Minority Leader and gubernatorial hopeful John McKinney can expect no help from the Connecticut Citizens Defense League due to his anti-gun legislative actions, CCDL President Scott Wilson announced in a press release today from Groton.
“Senator McKinney was instrumental in implementing a historic gun control law with zero consideration for the constitutional rights of law abiding gun owners,” the head of the state’s largest grass roots gun rights group explained. “With his deliberate act of siding with gun control supporters, there will be no support from CCDL for his run.”
“[O]ther elected officials who went along with the Senate leader and voted in favor of the gun control law could expect the same from the organization,” the release pledged … If he still wins the primary or there is no primary, we will not vote for him in the election.
Good for them. This may seem like a counterproductive scorched earth policy to some, but it’s precisely this objection that got us where we are today.
Conservative and libertarian voters have gone along to get along and voted for the best thing out there for decades under the assumption that less evil is better than more evil.
But over the course of these past decades we have seen our leaders equivocate, modulate, prevaricate, and adjust, adapt and modify their views to suit the Washington elite. As long as the inside-the-beltway talking heads are happy and our leaders stay in power, the only thing that changes is that we see less respect for our rights and liberties as time passes.
This slow roasting process has just about killed the ideological foundations of our republic such that thinking men and women have been replaced by corrupt, ignorant and self-serving politicians who would sell the souls of their mothers as long as it suited their purposes.
So compromise hasn’t done conservatives and libertarians any favors. It has harmed the cause of freedom. Gun owners in Connecticut are saying the same thing I’ve said concerning politicians like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan (who will never get my support because of their support of universal background checks), Marco Rubio (who will never get my support because of his sellout on immigration), and any of a host of ignominious political animals in Washington and at the state level.
Finally, the voters in Connecticut know what we all do instinctively. It’s better when you don’t fill in the gaps for the failures of our leaders. In the end, it’s better when people feel the consequences of their actions – there is no surer teacher than consequences.
Besides, I am no advocate of national action to undo the results of totalitarianism in Colorado, New York or Connecticut. While I appreciate that there are some in Colorado, for example, who want the courts to overturn their obscene gun laws, in the end they are not the court’s problem. The obscenities started on the state and local level, and they must be dealt with at the genesis of the problem. Totalitarians must be dealt with face to face.
The problems belong to Connecticut, and gun owners are trying to see that they are addressed there. I wish them success. May God be with them.
Read it all at Examiner.
http://www.captainsjournal.com/2013/07/23/no-compromise-on-gun-rights/