This upcoming presidential election could be the most consequential regarding Second Amendment rights. At the National Rifle Association-Institute for Legislative Action’s Leadership Forum in Louisville, Kentucky, executive director Chris Cox was adamant that if freedom-loving, pro-Second Amendment supporters fail to vote this November, we could “witness the end of individual freedom.”
Cox urged members that it’s time to unite, and that the cards have been dealt in the 2016 race. He was blunt in speaking to those in the crowd who were less than enthusiastic about how things had turned out.
“It's time to unite," he said. "If your preferred candidate dropped out of the race, it’s time to get over it.”
A pervasive theme of the weekend convention was that the Second Amendment was on the ballot, that the Supreme Court is up for grabs, and we need to fight as hard as we can to make sure Hillary Clinton is not elected president.
“After Justice Scalia's death, we don’t have five votes [on the Supreme Court] anymore. Our majority is gone,” warned Cox. “Justice Ginsburg says she looks forward to a future "wiser" court coming back and overturning our victory. It's that simple and that clear — the next president chooses the fifth justice, so the Second Amendment is on the ballot in November.”
He also made no qualms about what will definitely happen if Hillary enters the Oval Office—she’ll nominate a radical, anti-gun jurist (maybe more than one) and strip Americans of their individual right to self-defense. The socioeconomic impact would be equally devastating:
Here’s what will happen if she’s elected. She’ll put a radical, anti-gun activist in Scalia’s seat as soon as she can. The gun-control groups will take a Second Amendment case to the Supreme Court, where five justices will overturn what millions of Americans have fought and died to defend — the basic human right of self-defense.And as soon as the ruling clears, states like California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut will ban the manufacture and ownership of entire classes of firearms overnight.
Every gun store in those states will be out of business. Every gun range, shuttered. Hundreds of thousands of people in the firearms business will lose their jobs. And as bad as that sounds, it’s just the beginning.
It ends with no right to own a gun in your own home, anywhere in America, period.
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Cox is right. The spike in gun sales (over 100 million since the outset of Obama’s presidency) has led to an explosion in job creation in this sector. In 2015, there were over 20,000 jobs created alone, with a nationwide total of 287,986.
As the NRA’s executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, would say during the three-day convention, Clinton and her anti-gun colleagues would reserve the Second Amendment right to own a firearm to be only for those in the government, not for the individual. That’s inherently dangerous—rights only for the elite and the elite alone. It’s explicitly un-American.
To highlight the disconnect Clinton has with the rest of the electorate, Cox reminded the attendees that Clinton has never had to take a walk, or use the bathroom, without a good guy with a gun standing just a few feet away. She has no standing in lecturing us on how we choose to defend ourselves. Period.
For many years, the public was in favor of gun control. The NRA chose to fight that narrative and won. This election will be a do-or-die moment. The political left has placed American civil rights in the crosshairs, and it’s time for battle. Cox closed by saying that if Clinton wants to make this about gun rights, bring it on, pack a lunch, and get ready. The NRA has been around for 145 years, and they’re not going anywhere.
This is a fight for our freedom! We're not subjects. We're theNational Rifle Association of America. We were born to stand and fight.
You want to take our guns? Get ready, Hillary! Pack a lunch and give it a try. We've been here for 145 years — you know where to find us — and we're not going anywhere.
The organization then endorsed Donald Trump for president. An estimated 80,452 NRA members attended the annual meeting held on May 20-22.
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