Washington, DC – -(AmmoLand.com)- Right now, in some ways, Second Amendment supporters should be feeling very good. We have seen two very strong pro-Second Amendment justices on the Supreme Court, making Chief Justice John Roberts – who voted to strike down the handgun bans in Chicago and Washington, D.C., the swing vote. We have a pro-Second Amendment president who is nominating more pro-Second Amendment judges, and a Senate that is confirming them.
But what happens when there is an anti-Second Amendment president in office after Trump? That is not unthinkable. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won two terms while attacking our right to keep and bear arms. Their judicial appointments are generally hostile to the Second Amendment – the three justices appointed by Clinton and Obama (Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor) who heard the McDonald case voted to uphold Chicago’s handgun ban.
Ideally, the anti-Second Amendment president loses the election and never takes office. We can ensure that by securing Second Amendment support in the suburbs, promoting it in urban areas, and to also overcome language barriers. But we all know that despite the best efforts of Second Amendment supporters, that isn’t what happens.
So, what do we do should an anti-Second Amendment president take office? The time to plan is now – before the moment hits. If we fail to plan to protect our Second Amendment rights in those difficult times, we’re planning to fail to protect our Second Amendment rights.
So, what should our plan be? The first step is to leverage what we do have: To wit, use a pro-Second Amendment president and United States Senate to confirm pro-Second Amendment judges. This provides a firewall that can declare gun bans unconstitutional. But firewalls can be breached. This is the last line of defense against an anti-gun president.
The next step is to work to elect a strong pro-Second Amendment bench: State lawmakers, local officials, state’s attorney, even the school board. This is where many governors, attorneys general, Congressmen, and Senators get their start. And while President Trump is an exception, most presidents have once been governors or Senators in the past.
This farm team also has its uses. If you elect enough of these lower-level officials, you can literally block an anti-Second Amendment president or governor from pushing through that agenda. In 1999, a GOP Congress killed Bill Clinton’s post-Littleton gun-control agenda. In 2013, a Republican House was a bulwark against Obama’s efforts to reinstate an arbitrary semi-auto ban after Newtown. Think of this as another firewall, the third-best defense against an anti-gun president.
Now, we come to the second-best defense against an anti-Second Amendment president: You boot him (or her as the case may be) out after one term. To do this, you need that solid farm team to produce a contender. This can work out reasonably well, but that anti-Second Amendment president still has four years’ worth of time to wield regulatory power and the bully pulpit.
When all is said and done, the best defense for an anti-Second Amendment president is to make sure one isn’t elected in the first place. But it is foolish to place our rights in that basket. We need to make sure that we have adequate plans to withstand the next president who will try to deprive us of our rights.
About Harold Hutchison
Writer Harold Hutchison has more than a dozen years of experience covering military affairs, international events, U.S. politics and Second Amendment issues. Harold was consulting senior editor at Soldier of Fortune magazine and is the author of the novel Strike Group Reagan. He has also written for the Daily Caller, National Review, Patriot Post, Strategypage.com, and other national websites.
Facts are terrible things. Fact 1: gun owners are notoriously lax when it comes to voting, or joining organizations that support them. When they do join, they expect that their small pittance in dues should suffice, and that the organization should do all it can using that small pittance to promote 2A. Fact 2: The apathy in the gun owner community stinks to high heaven. I have sat tables trying to convince gun owners to join pro-2A organizations, and it is like pulling eye teeth, and molars. They think they are simply going to shoot it out in the dead… Read more »
A great and fundamental beginning would be for the lazy SOB’s, who sat out the recent election, did not vote, and may have contributed to many of the losses we incurred that led to the House falling back under the corrupt, biased leadership of the Democrats, to get off those lazy asses and VOTE! We can see daily our rights corroded by these Leftist zealots, with their plans to degrade the Constitution, to eliminate the aspects of the Second Amendment that allow citizens to own firearms. Every day, I see and hear what the Democrats have in store for us,… Read more »
Go back and read the congressional testimony of then NRA president Karl T. Frederick during the hearings for the abominable affront to God and country known as the 1934 NFA. Frederick didn’t want us leaving our houses with a handgun, without being licensed i.e. a government permission slip. The NRA: the largest wealthiest most powerful gun control organization in world history. As others have noted, for the current POTUS he has kept us from another Clinton presidency for at most, another two years. That sums it up perfectly methinks.
The current anti-Second Amendment President still has two more years to go, if he can’t help himself exiting the stage earlier. He may even have four more years after that. What’s our plan for that? In fact, what was our plan for the last two years? Relying on “gun-control Donald” and the NRA has clearly not worked out.
I’m more concerned about the current president that has regulation rewritten into law,which only congress can do Constitutionally,issues a new edict ,also UnConstitutional.
I couldn’t agree more, but unfortunately, lighting a fire underneath gun owners is very difficult. Just on the face of it, there are approximately 100-million-plus gun owners in America, but only between five- and six-million NRA members. If you own a gun, you be an NRA member. I would also add that another line of defense are the organizations (like the NRA, and the Second Amendment Foundation, and Gun Owners of America) that pay for the lawyers to fight egregiously unconstitutional anti-gun laws at local, state, and federal levels. Without those organizations and their lawyers, we’d be in worse shape… Read more »