Originally published in the October 2018 Official Journals of the National Rifle Association
Make no mistake. This election is about your Second Amendment … your guns … your freedom.
A recent front-page headline in The Wall Street Journal spelled it out: It was under the headline, “For Democrats, Guns Are New Litmus Test.”
As the article noted, “Democrats running for Congress in 2018 are pushing a muscular gun control agenda that represents a wholesale repositioning on the hot-button issue. In this year’s midterm election, gun control has become a [Democratic] Party litmus test from which few dissent, alongside abortion rights and support for same-sex marriage.”
The article explains that the overt focus on attacking the Second Amendment has “been propelled by new money and organization, as well as energy among Democratic activists and voters that has pushed candidates [to support gun control], lest they appear out of step with the party’s base.”
This represents a shift in the national Democratic Party that I described last February in a speech to the American Conservative Union’s CPAC conference. As I explained then, over the last decade—the Obama decade—many pro-freedom Democrats have been forced out as a tidal wave of new European-style socialists have seized control of the Democratic Party.
Obama’s promise to fundamentally transform America began with his own national party, a Democratic Party now infested with saboteurs who don’t believe in capitalism … don’t believe in the U.S. Constitution … and don’t believe in individual freedom—especially the individual right to own a firearm.
Obama may be gone, but their utopian dream for a Euro-style socialist state of America marches on. I’m not just talking about Bernie Sanders, a self-avowed socialist. Think about Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Bill de Blasio, Andrew Cuomo, Cory Booker, Keith Ellison and Christopher Murphy.
These are not Democratic leaders in the mold of John F. Kennedy (an NRA Life member, by the way) or Tip O’Neill. But these modern socialists could well become the leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives if Democrats take over those legislative bodies in this election.
If that happens, you know what happens next. They’ll cut President Donald Trump off at the knees, maybe even move to impeach him from office. They’ll expand the U.S. Supreme Court, just so they can add a few more liberal, anti-Second Amendment justices to the court to eradicate our firearms freedom.
When our freedom is on the line and when we all turn out and march to the polls nationwide, we win!
They have billions of dollars on their side. They have almost the entire national media on their side. Hollywood and celebrity elites are on their side. All of the liberal, socialistic—even violent—protest groups are on their side, and they’re ranting and raving and marching to defeat us … to take our country, our freedom and our firearms away—forever.
But there’s another march coming—the march to the polls in this election. When all is said and done, it is the only march that really matters, because it is the one march that makes all the difference between losing our freedom and all we care about … or saving it for another generation.
I know I don’t have to ask you to go to the polls this year and vote for pro-Second Amendment candidates on Election Day.
I just want you to know that this year, it’s more important than ever. You know the media and the anti-freedom Democrats are salivating over the prospect of capturing the House and Senate ... and the White House two years from now. They can almost taste it.
But they’re forgetting about you. They are ignoring the fact that NRA members, and America’s gun owners, have made the vital difference in close elections so many times before. They think they’ll beat us this year.
That’s why gun control is now their “litmus test,” and to that, I say, “Great!”
If they want to make this election about our Second Amendment freedom, then let’s all of us make this election about our Second Amendment freedom.
When our freedom is on the line and when we all turn out and march to the polls nationwide, we win!
They’ve had their turn to denigrate and call us names and blame us for atrocities we had nothing to do with. They’ve taken their best shot at destroying our freedom.
Now it’s our turn. These are our liberties. Our rights.
March to the polls. We were born for this moment to defend the freedom that runs in our blood and pounds in our hearts. This is our time and our election to take.
So get to work. Make sure everyone votes. Stand and fight, yet again, in this all-or-nothing election to prove for all time that we, the members of the National Rifle Association of America, are “Freedom’s Safest Place!”
