"Get the hell out." That should be the message to any Republican who is thinking about betraying us on the Second Amendment. It's non-negotiable, especially now. For Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY), he's learned what happens to you when you announce that you're working with Democrats to butcher the Second Amendment.
Rep. Jacobs announced his openness to banning common firearm magazines and modern sporting rifles in the aftermath of the Buffalo shooting and the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Yeah, that's not going to fly, congressman (via NYT) [emphasis mine]:
Speaking from his suburban Buffalo district a week ago, about 10 miles from the grocery store where 10 Black residents were slaughtered, Mr. Jacobs framed his risky break from bedrock Republican orthodoxy as bigger than politics: “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something,” he said.
It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him.
… facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.
The episode, which played out as President Biden pleaded with lawmakers in Washington to pass a raft of new laws to address gun violence, may be a portent for proponents of gun control, who had welcomed Mr. Jacobs’s evolution on the issue as a sign that the nation’s latest mass tragedies might break a decades-old logjam in Washington.
[…]
…after local gun rights groups had posted his office phone number on the internet and local party leaders had started pulling their support one by one, political analysts predicted he may well lose a primary challenge based solely on his embrace of firearm restrictions.
Party leaders and allies who have spoken with him in recent days said Mr. Jacobs clearly understood the political ramifications of his decision to support powerful gun control measures — but he nonetheless refused to back away from it.
Know your party. Know your base. And act accordingly. Supporters don't want you for objectivity or for doing the right thing. They want you for your subjectivity and the guarantee that you won't cave on key GOP policy positions. If that's not how you want to play, decide not to run or change parties. In either case, Jacobs would have lost.
This isn't the 1990s where there were more than a few moderate-to-conservative Democrats of good faith. They're all lunatics now, except for the likes of Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and maybe Jon Tester. That's it. Democrats now are just playing the long game here, waiting in the tall grass for the opportunity to confiscate firearms. If they say otherwise, they're lying. They want expanded background checks to get a national registry going, and there is but one purpose for that list. They already said that shredding the Bill of Rights was a top action item. Yet, this comes after calls to pack the Supreme Court with unhinged leftists. I don't care if these are Hail Mary scenarios; always have a full-court press. I don't like shooting inside the ship too much, but on this—when one of us is behaving badly—fire away.
And let's not shed a tear for Mr. Jacobs. The man comes from a wealthy and well-connected family; they own the Boston Bruins. He'll be fine, but be okay away from the Republican Party, you RINO piece of trash.
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