Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I admit it, I’m a single issue voter. I vote pro-2nd Amendment. Don’t get to go shooting much, usually only own one gun at a time because I can’t afford two, and I do so much business in gun free zones that my gun spends most of its time in a drawer or car glove box. But I guarantee I will use that gun to forcibly protect my ownership of it, and all my other rights,until I run out of ammunition and have to pick up a dead foeman’s gun to keep fighting. And I’m sure there are a lot of Americans who feel the same way.

So we keep voting for the same politicians who promise to not take our guns, especially since the guy running against them is promising to make the world safer by taking our guns away. Sometimes the guys we vote for even promise to do pro-gun things, like getting rid of the NFA restrictions on silencers. And once they get in (or stay in) it seems that if no gun control laws get passed neither do a lot of pro gun laws. Somehow GOA, NRA. and JPFO voters end up on the back burner.

The same thing seems to happen to happen on laws to legalize marijuana, lower taxes, guarantee civil liberties, and so on. It seems things don’t get worse, but they don’t get better. Sometimes we take three steps forward and only two steps back, and we have to settle for this, call it winning. At least we didn’t have to take four steps back.

The thing is, there are no single issue Congressmen and Senators. Gun rights and other issues are bargaining chips, points of agreement to build coalitions that then have to make deals with other coalitions.

It is getting near primary season for off year elections. Now is the time to get after pro gun politicians to vote “the right way” unless they want to lose the nomination to someone who will. Otherwise by election time it’s going to be a choice between a person who falls short of keeping his promise to support your cause and someone whose cause is harmful to you. Otherwise on 6th November you’ll have to go vote against the guy who’s worse, not the guy who’s better.

The 2018 elections are going to be a vote of confidence on Trump and Trumpism, or at least that’s what the mainstream media and the Democrats want it to be. I don’t know exactly what Trumpism is, good, bad, or in between. I do know what I want to be the law of the land, beginning with guarantees of my rights to hang onto my one gun and finally buy a couple more and be able to hang on to the darn thing. I don’t want to have to settle for the guy that will do the least damage to my rights, I want to vote for someone who will try to actually act to make my rights more secure.

Make sure you show up at your state primaries.