Alphecca

Re: McCain, with the exception of the gun show loophole BS, anything else wrong?

What's up with Barak? I don't know that I've ever heard him say one thing about guns (he may have, I just don't usually pay attention to Democrats from Ilinois - which, I guess answers my own question)

Four million is enough to make the difference in the presidential election. Are you prepared to face a Democrat president and a Democrat Congress, just because you couldn't find a sufficiently pro-gun candidate?

Don't forget about antigun RINO George Pataki.

Thanks for keeping this list. It is an important enough issue to make me cross party lines.

McCain also voted for the AWB.

Obama is virulently anti-gun and believes all semi-automatics should be banned. period.

Wolfwalker -- I have said here time and again that I will no longer vote by party or for the lessor of two evils. I have ONE litmus test -- the Second Amendment -- and I'm sticking with it.

I used to be somewhat resigned to accepting some vacillation on 2d amendment rights for presidential candidates, especially if they were more libertarian on social issues and strong in the war on islamofascism.

But I was counting on a congress friendly with our( right to self-defense to protect us. Now the Democrats have taken over and experience shows us, they can't be counted on.

Unfortunately, that leaves us with no viable candidate from either party. I'm with Jeff, I will no longer vote for the lessor of two evils. However, I have other litmus tests along with gun rights. That led me to effectively abstain in the '06 election.

The McCain-Feingold successful attack on free speech was more than enough to remove McCain from any list of people I am willing to vote for.

Jeff, the problem with your lesser of two evils argument is that it not only does it not work, but actually makes things worse for the 2nd Amendment.

All staying home on Election Day does is give larger margins of victory to antigun politicians and the antigun agenda. The reason being is that the mildly antigun loser will see the big victory the winning antigun zealot got at the ballot box and move in his direction. The loser will think gun control is what the voters want and, by adopting some or all of the antigun zealot’s agenda, they hope they will be able to pull votes from the zealot in the next election cycle.

There’s a reason small gun organizations and their groupies who espouse all or nothing rhetoric aren’t taken seriously by politicians. That’s because politicians understand that it’s not about right or wrong, it’s about winning and losing. NRA understands this as well. When you stay home, your opinions don't count and you lose.

Then WE IN THE BLOGOSPHERE need to start right now getting the message out that we demand someone who speaks to our prime concerns. One little blog like mine has no impact but if all 100 gun bloggers on the TTL list exerted pressure, and got some of the big guys interested in a pro-gun, libertarian candidate, there might be an impact on the nominating process.

Get serious. Your top-down approach to politics is guaranteed to fail. 100 other gun bloggers bitching means nothing because 100 x 0 = 0.

If you want to influence politicians at the top of the food chain, you need to start at the bottom. If gunnies spent more time helping pro-gun local and state legislators there wouldn’t be any question as to the ideology of those at the top of the ticket.

Politics is about leverage, knowing which key races where you should invest money and effort and which races to ignore. Have a realistic goal. You can’t affect who the presidential candidates will be, but with some effort you might be able to affect a local race for Mayor of Bennington or a seat in the VT legislature. Have some of your friends do the same around VT. If you can control a bunch of lesser offices, you’ll find you can suddenly leverage area Congressmen, even Marxist assholes like Bernie Sanders.

If gunnies did this in all 50 states and there won’t be any question that a pro-gunner will be at the top of the ticket. That’s how to leverage the presidential contenders.

Thanks Jeff.

Like I said, I had pretty much zero knowledge regarding Obma and his position on guns, but as he is from Chicago (and D) it shouldn't have been too surprising.

Joe, there are plenty of reasons to vote against McCain, I was looking for gun related reasons beyond the dumb gun show loophole. Did he vote for the original AWB and the subsequent attempts to reinstate it? If so, thats especially troublesome.

I notice that Al Gore isn't on your list. Is this an inadvertent omission, or do you still consider him to be possibly acceptable?

I don't consider Gore as having a snowball in hell chance but no, I would never EVER vote for him.

Here's a more pertinent question, and one that all of us will probably have to answer before November 2008: How is McCain any worse than Bush? After all, Bush claimed that he would have signed a renewal of the AWB, and he hasn't done much to promote a positive, pro-self-defense agenda.

Jeff,

Are you saying that if a candidate agreed with you on every single issue of any significance except gun control, then you still wouldn't vote for him?

Are you saying that if a candidate was Masshole-style liberal on every single issue of any significance except gun rights, you would vote for him?

There is no candidate that I agree with on most subjects, that's why I stick to considering how they feel about the 2nd Amendment. All rights spring from there, or at least my personal defense does against anything else they can dream up.

Keep up the good work, Jeff.

Oh.

4,000,001.

4,000,002

Countertop-
Obama may not have made it yet to busting on the 2nd Ammendment. He's still busy trying to bust the 1st. He is one of the two authors behind Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2006, a reform bill that would classify you as a grassroots lobbyist if you wrote your congressmen, and require you to be registered as a lobbyist. Registered by the government to be able to petition the government for redress of grievances.