By Jeff Knox : Opinion
Buckeye, AZ –-(Ammoland.com)- Once again, Mike Bloomberg is dumping money into a state with the hope of buying seats for his anti-rights cronies, and the race is seen as a warm-up event for the critical congressional elections next year.
Virginia is one of the few states that holds their elections for governor and the State Legislature in off-years, and this year’s election is a biggie, with very clear lines drawn in the sand, where rights are concerned.
The big race is for Governor, where Democrat, Ralph Northam is running against Republican, Ed Gillespie, and Libertarian, Cliff Hyra. The commonwealth of Virginia has term limits for the governor’s office, so the current governor, Terry McAuliffe cannot run again.
Bloomberg and his various anti-rights front groups have dumped over $1.1 million into the campaign in support of Northam, and another $600,000 in support of Attorney General Mark Herring’s reelection bid against Republican attorney, John Adams.
Surrogates for Democrat, Ralph Northam run crazy racist attack ad:
Northam is advocating a radical, anti-rights agenda with extreme measures. He calls for reinstating the failed “one handgun a month” rule. He also calls for a law mandating all firearm transfers go through licensed dealers. That would include not only sales, but, but long-term loans between friends, neighbors, and family members, or leaving guns with a friend through an extended absence. Northam also supports a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and wants to mandate “smaller clips.”
In 2013, when Terry McAuliffe was the Democrat candidate, Bloomberg almost cost him the election with his massive spending on the campaign. McAuliffe’s poll numbers perversely started falling like a rock as Bloomberg pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race to support him. We’re convinced that the reason McAuliffe’s numbers started falling was that Virginia voters didn’t appreciate Bloomberg trying to buy their election, and they really didn’t like McAuliffe’s support for stricter gun control laws.
Unfortunately, the Bloomberg backlash was too late to change the outcome, and McAuliffe managed to hang on for to win by two percentage points.
This year, Bloomberg’s involvement has been prominent throughout the campaign, and Northam’s early lead has been slowly slipping as more Virginia voters have become aware of his radical gun control agenda.
Though he masks his anti-rights advocacy with focus group terms like “gun violence prevention” and “gun safety,” the fact is that none of his proposals will prevent gun violence or have anything to do with safety. But they will impact responsible gun owners, restricting what we can own, costing us time and money to jump through useless bureaucratic hoops in order to legally transfer a firearm to a friend, and making us wait a month to buy more than one handgun, regardless of how many we might already own.
Northam plays up his service as a doctor in the U.S. Army, where he received training as a pediatric neurologist in the Washington, D.C. area, then served for a time at a hospital in Germany. That training led to his lucrative pediatric neurology practice in Norfolk.
With this background, he is critical of the VA healthcare system, while simultaneously calling for implementation of a similar, government-run system for all Americans. He is also a strong proponent of abortion on demand, which seems contradictory to his oath to care for children.
Attorney General Mark Herring’s anti-rights extremism is so radical that it was too much even for McAuliffe, who blocked Herring’s attempts to cancel concealed carry reciprocity agreements between Virginia and dozens of other states, based on nothing more than his personal discomfort with the idea of armed citizens. Now Herring is actively opposing efforts to make Virginians’ concealed carry licenses valid nationwide, again ignoring the clear evidence that legal carry is not only not a threat to public safety, but actually makes people safer. As the old saw goes, in a life or death crisis, when seconds count, police are just minutes away. But a personal sidearm can be right there when you need it.
Both Northam and Herring served in the Virginia legislature, and both have long records demonstrating their lack of trust for their fellow Virginians, and support for more powerful, more intrusive government, with higher taxes, tighter regulations, and greater reliance on, and subservience to, the federal government.
Ralph Northam and Mark Herring might be native Virginians, but their views more closely reflect those of native New Yorker, Mike Bloomberg. That’s why he’s willing to spend millions to get them elected.
The Washington Post, New York Times, and other anti-rights media have been attacking Gillespie on his opposition to gun control, especially in the wake of the October 1 attack in Las Vegas. Though most gun control advocates grudgingly admit that none of their proposed restrictions would have prevented the Las Vegas atrocity, or any of the other high-profile attacks of recent years, still they use these tragedies as an emotional hook for pushing their agenda.
The wild-card in the governor’s race is Libertarian, Cliff Hyra. Though Hyra is only polling at about 4%, most of his voters would likely support Gillespie over Northam, if it were a two-way race, and those votes could easily decide the matter, as they did in 2013 when McAuliffe was elected. In that race, McAuliffe beat Republican Ken Ciccinelli by just over 2%, while the Libertarian candidate garnered 6.5% of the vote. If libertarian-leaning voters again vote with an upraised middle finger, rather than casting a ballot for the best candidate with a chance of winning, 2017 could be a repeat of 2013.
If Northam wins, you can be certain that the victory will be painted as a referendum against the policies of President Trump, and in favor of stricter gun control laws.
This is not an election that any gun owner or lover of liberty can afford to sit out. If you are a Virginia resident, or you know anyone who lives in Virginia, please be sure to vote and/or encourage your friends and family to go to the polls on November 7th. Share this column widely, because the results in Virginia will create political momentum that could impact all of us.
Do whatever you can to make sure rights win the day.
About Jeff Knox:
Jeff Knox is a second-generation political activist and director of The Firearms Coalition. His father Neal Knox led many of the early gun rights battles for your right to keep and bear arms. Read Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War.
The Firearms Coalition is a loose-knit coalition of individual Second Amendment activists, clubs and civil rights organizations. Founded by Neal Knox in 1984, the organization provides support to grassroots activists in the form of education, analysis of current issues, and with a historical perspective of the gun rights movement. The Firearms Coalition has offices in Buckeye, Arizona and Manassas, VA. Visit: www.FirearmsCoalition.
That video,if it wasn’t so ridiculously out of touch with reality, almost made me laugh.
However, it clearly demonstrates just a couple of pathetic realities being openly promoted by leftist/liberals, 1) Everything and anything is primarily about race, and; 2) Everything and anything concerning the right/conservatives is unquestionably racist.
As a conservative leaning individual, I can only hope they continue to perpetuate such ignorance. Because I can’t imagine how such blatant stupidity is somehow supposed to help anyone, anywhere. Perhaps it’s not intended too.
The video tells the whole story about Northam. He is a liar and a cheat.Virginia will be just as bad off with him in there as it was with McAwful. Anyone that would authorize an ad such as that just shot himself in the foot, as far as I am concerned.
If a candidate tells lies in a TV ad running for office just think what they will be like if they win the election, we just went through eight years of someone like that in the White House.
Amen!
Let the Dems preach their anti-gun BS it has always been a loser for the left anti constitution creeps