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apostate wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 9:38 pm Most of the Republicans who will appear on my ballot next year have gone out of their way to attack my constitutional rights. That makes them ineligible for my vote.

Their choice. Their consequences.

The problem is that their opponents have likely gone even further to attack your Constitutional rights. And now you (and I ) have a problem about what to do in the voting booth. I've often felt like it was a choice about the caliber of the gun that I use to shoot myself rather than my vote for an elected official.

Doug.38PR wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2019 4:18 pm
You mean the point when Reagan, in effect, banned Machine Guns in 1986?
Looks like we are in for worse now with the way the party is going...including the President...and now Texas. (If we lose Texas via demographic change...we lose all of the states. America will be gone forever)

So I'll put my devil's advocate hat on and say that we are better than we have been for the Second Amendment. There are challenges and there will always be challenges but other than the bump stock mess, we haven't "officially" lost ground because no new restrictive laws have been passed at the Federal level.

Regarding the restrictive laws at the State level, there have been a few high profile cases where "they" tried to make an example of an individual for breaking one of those laws. Most of those have not gone the way that the gun grabbers wanted. There have been pardons and charges dropped. There were threats in Connecticut when the bans were passed there that the police would be kicking in doors at 6am. It hasn't happened. It is a standoff between the politicians and the gun owners. There has been a lot of fallout and the loss of jobs and firearm companies moved out. Places like Illinois and D.C. have had to capitulate on carry laws. Clearly there are hold-outs - NJ, NY, CA, HI but in all of those places, the Second Amendment is only part of the problem.

We need to look in a mirror. We have not grown the NRA and other gun support groups to the extent that we should have. We have not made the phones of those representing us at the State and Federal levels ring off the hook when they do and say stupid things. They will try to get away with all that they can, if we let them. I'm a citizen advocate (part of a group) who has called entire committees in the Texas House and Senate over specific pieces of legislation. We have gotten changes made. If half of the members of this forum had make similar phone calls about specific pieces of firearm related legislation, those bills would almost have certainly gone differently. I'm not here to defend any of our reps at the Federal or State levels. I've been furious without most of them more times than I can count. But this is a representative government and we get the representation that we allow.