I would appreciate it if you took the time to read what I have to say, and don't just downvote it into oblivion. Yes, it's long, but I think it's important we talk about this.
If you are a gun owner like me, and are serious about protecting your rights under the 2nd Amendment, then you need to start supporting Bernie Sanders, right now.
Hear me out.
Let's get real, the odds of a Republican candidate getting elected POTUS in 2016 are slim and none.
Here is a quote from "2016 and Beyond: How Republicans Can Elect a President in the New America" by Whit Ayres, that sums up the problem quite well:
“If the 2016 Republican nominee wins the same percentage of the white vote that Mitt Romney won in 2012 — 59 percent — then he or she will need to win 30 percent of the non-white vote to be elected. That is far greater than the 17 percent of the non-white vote that Romney achieved in 2012, or the 19 percent John McCain won in 2008, and better even than the 26 percent of the non-white vote that George W. Bush won his 2004 reelection campaign.”
“On the other hand, if the 2016 Republican nominee wins no more of the non-white vote than Romney’s 17 percent, he or she will need to win 65 percent of the white vote to win. That is a level of white vote achieved by only one Republican nominee in the past forty years: Ronald Reagan in his 49-state landslide reelection sweep in 1984, when he won 66 percent of the white vote… Republicans can complain about these trends, wring their hands over them, and get heartburn as a result. What they can’t do is change them.”
Yes, I know the Republican party swept the midterm state wide elections. Big deal. State wide elections are easy to sweep due to gerrymandering of districts. Take a good look at an electoral college map, and you start to see why Republican wins in the South don't mean a whole lot in a national election.
Right now, as it stands, Hillary Clinton is our next President. Bitch, moan, whine, and complain all you want, but if we don't do something USEFUL, and soon, then that's what is going to happen.
So, why Bernie Sanders? Because he is a bigger threat to a Clinton presidency than any candidate the Republicans can bring to the fold, and his track record on gun control isn't that bad. He voted against standard capacity magazine bans, the 1990's AWB, and, most importantly, against allowing the families of the Sandy Hook shooting to sue the manufacturers of the firearms used in the shooting. That's a SHIT TON better than Hillary, who as recently as 2008 has stated she is in favor of a new AWB.
Now, the big problem is that if Sanders doesn't receive our support, as gun owners, he will cave to party pressure and take a stronger anti-gun stance. He is, after all, a politician. If we show the sanders camp that there is vote value in courting gun owners, and that he can realistically get our support, then all of a sudden his traditional stance on the 2nd Amendment becomes a lot more important.
So, that's it. That's my argument. I'm voting for Sanders because guns are important to me, and he's the best chance we have of keeping them. You can join me, or stock up on black rifles and ammo, because if Hillary wins, it wont go well for us.
