{"id":58101,"date":"2020-08-12T16:24:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T21:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=58101"},"modified":"2020-08-12T16:24:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-12T21:24:00","slug":"58101","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=58101","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM PANDEMIC PANIC?<\/a>
\nABOVE ALL ELSE, IT SCARED THE GUN CONTROL CROWD!<\/em><\/p>\n

Want to frighten the gun prohibition lobby?<\/p>\n

Declare a pandemic and watch legions of fence-sitting non-gun owners scramble to be first in line at the nearest gun store, then watch their facial expressions when they discover buying guns really isn\u2019t as easy or haphazard as they\u2019ve been led to believe.<\/p>\n

Disappointment and worry are great motivations to change one\u2019s philosophy, especially when it might involve personal preservation. Every new gun owner can translate to a new rights activist, which means one less gun-control extremist.
\nThis past March, for example, 2A Defense took a close-up look at the \u201cgun rush\u201d where an estimated 2.2 million firearms were purchased by panicked people evidently fearing a collapse of society as they knew it. Firearms retailers told us many \u2014 if not most \u2014 of their customers from the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in February through at least the first couple of weeks in April were first-time buyers.<\/p>\n

According to some dealers, there were lots of people at gun store counters who had previously been gun control advocates. As liberals often do, they evidently believed all those restrictive gun laws they supported were meant for someone else. They were stunned when they learned they couldn\u2019t just hand a clerk cash or a credit card and take their new gun home.
\nThey discovered background checks slowed down because the National Instant Check System (NICS) was overloaded. This happened because \u201cnon-essential\u201d employees were furloughed, others got sick and more than 3 million background checks were initiated, a new record for the month of March.<\/p>\n

These new gun owners also discovered waiting periods, and found out they couldn\u2019t just walk around with a loaded handgun unless they applied for, and received, a carry permit or license \u2014 plus, it took time to get one of those.<\/p>\n

In short, lots of \u201cfence sitters\u201d or former gun control supporters learned they\u2019ve been deceived by the gun prohibition lobby and they didn\u2019t like it.<\/p>\n

Jump ahead to right now. As this is written we\u2019re not sure how much the November election results will have changed the dynamic, but come January, many of these folks may be new allies in state level efforts to change, or perhaps even repeal some restrictive gun laws. This prospect has gun grabbers such as Everytown for Gun Safety, Moms Demand Action, Giffords, Brady and the Alliance for Gun Responsibility very concerned.<\/p>\n

The Virginia Lesson
\nEarlier this year American gun owners got an ugly lesson in politics, courtesy Virginia Democrats and vehemently anti-gun Gov. Ralph Northam. When 22,000 angry and alarmed Virginians descended on the Capitol in Richmond, Democrats who had just won control of the General Assembly for the first time in two decades ignored them.<\/p>\n

This rally, the gun owners had to acknowledge, happened because too many of them had been too lazy to vote in 2019 when only about 40 percent of Virginia\u2019s electorate bothered to vote. We\u2019ve discussed this before and hopefully Virginians won\u2019t let it happen again. Those lawmakers will face Old Dominion voters in November 2021 and if the activism is still hot, a fair number of people will be looking for new jobs the following January.<\/p>\n

Right now is the time to reach out to all these new gun owners. Invite them to join you at the range. If you\u2019re an instructor, offer them personal one-on-one safety training. Ask them to join your gun club and make them welcome.<\/p>\n

The Nova Scotia Lesson
\nHas it really been six months since a Canadian police buff, apparently obsessed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, killed 22 people in a rampage which isn\u2019t supposed to happen because of all the restrictive gun laws north of the border?
\nThere is no Second Amendment in Canada. You won\u2019t find 17.5 million people licensed to carry concealed handguns. Firearms ownership is much more strictly regulated up there \u2014 so much, some U.S. gun control advocates have occasionally used Canada\u2019s gun laws as the example they wish our country would follow.<\/p>\n

The lesson from Canada, summed up by gun rights groups such as the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, is uncomfortably blunt: Gun control laws do not prevent determined people from committing violent crimes. Restrictive gun control measures make it impossible for honest citizens to defend themselves and their families from such predators.<\/p>\n

Nobody wants to talk about this so you have to. Start planning for January legislative sessions in your state. Do some homework on the Portapique rampage and be prepared to confront and correct anti-gunners trying to exploit the tragedy to further a gun control agenda down here in the States.<\/p>\n

The Pandemic Lesson
\nWhatever else we learned, or at least reinforced, during the springtime Pandemic panic was the Second Amendment remains the fallback fail-safe, even among people who never before owned a gun \u2014 or even wanted to.<\/p>\n

Somewhere buried deep in the American fabric is the understanding we\u2019re ultimately responsible for our own safety. When trouble appears on the horizon, regardless what people may have previously thought or felt, they reach for the one tool \u2014 the one piece of emergency survival equipment \u2014 which represents a fighting chance if all else fails.<\/p>\n

We can build on this lesson. Grassroots rights activists have a rare opportunity to swell the ranks with people who have recently been \u201cconverted\u201d and now understand how restrictive gun control laws prevent them and other honest citizens from exercising their rights.<\/p>\n

Contact your local gun shop, ask who might be a new gun owner in need of safety instruction. Introduce yourself to some of these folks, and be subtle rather than overbearing. Find out about them; see what interests them. You might find several things in common beyond firearms.<\/p>\n

Make new friends and remember, friends are far less likely to work against one another when they have common interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WHAT DID YOU LEARN FROM PANDEMIC PANIC? ABOVE ALL ELSE, IT SCARED THE GUN CONTROL CROWD! Want to frighten the gun prohibition lobby? Declare a pandemic and watch legions of fence-sitting non-gun owners scramble to be first in line at the nearest gun store, then watch their facial expressions when they discover buying guns really … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58102,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58101\/revisions\/58102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}