People keep asking the same questions:
President Trump tweeted on Thursday morning that the Congress should basically create a national gun registry, as he proposed something along the lines of “comprehensive background checks”, whatever that means. Here’s the tweet:
“I will be strongly pushing Comprehensive Background Checks with an emphasis on Mental Health. Raise age to 21 and end sale of Bump Stocks! Congress is in a mood to finally do something on this issue – I hope!”
The thing is, this tweet can be interpreted in 2 ways. If you’re a leftist, you may argue that President Trump finally caved on gun control, and in the aftermath of the Florida high-school shooting he’s asking Congress to create a national gun registry and universal background check legislation, a measure pushed and lauded by the anti 2nd amendment left for years. It’s interesting that not even dear leader Barry Obama did not dare pass such a law, when the Democrats had total control over the US government, and it would be very weird for the Donald to do such a thing, that would alienate his fan base for ever, making him a one-term president. In case you’re not getting the part with the national gun registry, you should know that universal background checks cannot work sans a national gun registry. And following gun registration requirements, there’s just one small step to make, which inevitably leads to gun confiscation. The example is California, where universal background checks were followed immediately by registration requirements and then by gun confiscation legislation.
I will admit when Trump first showed up, I was mildly suspicious. A Manhattan Billionaire, who floated through high society did not strike me as likely to be a dedicated conservative. Yeah, he was brilliant, but I worried a New Yorker would just be telling me what I wanted to hear. But then again, Don Jr and Erik were his sons, so I was open to him. Since then he has never let us down.
We have been through this a thousand times. An issue arises. Trump offers to do something the left will like, as well as something the right will like. In the minds of leftists, he becomes reasonable.
Then the process plays itself out, and the thing the leftists would like is stalled by the system, the thing the right wants gets through, and Trump reluctantly signs the bill with what the right wants, and laments that the system didn’t allow him to get the full package he wanted.
In the end, the right will get exactly what it wants. The public will, in their deep subconscious, feel as if Trump is a reasonable moderate who tried to appease both sides and create a reasonable compromise. And the left will end up quietly frustrated, and demotivated, as their resistance to Trump diminishes. It is the most brilliant combination of actual accomplishment and psychological strategy I have ever seen. He gets the right what it wants, and leaves people with the feeling he is trying to help both sides.
So when you hear Trump is trying to create a national registry, that he will raise the age of ownership, that he will allow state seizure of firearms off a single judge’s decision, know that is the head game. Trump knows the NRA and the Republican Congress will shut all of that down before it gets close to passing. He knows none of it will affect anything nearly as much as armed teachers and armed guards.
Hell, from a practical matter, he can’t prevent gun ownership by someone of age to serve in the Marine Corps in combat, without running afoul of the Second Amendment. He can’t ban bump stocks without affecting a whole plethora of recoil attenuating stocks, which is why ATF never acted on them in the first place. And congress will never go for any of that anyway. But he says it, and the public changes how they view him.
Trump also knows intimately that he cannot give the left anything which would reward their protesting or activism, or it will only invigorate them and produce increased protesting and activism. Leftists have to fail against him completely, every time out, and they have to be trained to see activism and opposition as useless and pointless. Trump is the master, and he plays the head game as hard as he plays the real game, so he is going to make them fail, he just isn’t going to look responsible as he does it.
So whenever you get antsy, remind yourself of Gorsuch, the tax cuts, the wall prototypes, and amnesty for the 2.1 million DACAs. Know Trump is fighting for the right, and winning every time. In the end, he will end up with the benefit of the image of a moderate, while the right still gets everything it wants on a silver platter. And when the midterms come around, he will get everyone he wants elected into Congress because of it and we will end up even stronger. The man is a machine.
Trust the God Emperor, because he has yet to let us down.
I am pretty let down about the lack of real progress on the wall. And on how few deep state perp walks there have been.
I can accept what he says, I can accept what he does, I am having concerns about what he does not do.
You really give the NRA WAY too much credit. Make absolutely ZERO mistake – the NRA is a DC lobby firm, which means that it does not protect gun rights, it protects itself. It has to walk a very fine line, win too much and the 2A crowd gets complacent and stops buying memberships. Lose too much, and the 2A crowd starts wondering why we keep sending money to incompetents. The ideal operating environment for the NRA is the 1990’s – a Democrat president one election away from a congress that will give him the ability to ban all guns, or at least all semi-autos. That’s the NRA’s business model, and no mistake, that the extent of their conviction.
After Obama never managed a single significant push on gun control you gotta know they REALLY wanted Hillary, and instead they got the God Emperor.
What that means is that the NRA has to preemptively lose one just to remind everybody what that’s like – hence the ATF “rule change” currently winding it’s way through the process that will result in bump-stocks and binary triggers being classified as “rate-increasing devices” that are treated as “machine guns” and thus illegal without a tax stamp which cannot be obtained on anything made after 1986. It was the NRA’s idea. I’m sure it will be challenged in court. I’m NOT sure that the Supreme Nine will take the case, as they have not taken a gun case lately.
If I could talk to Trump directly, my terms to counter his tweets would be a one for one – you take something, we get something. You take affordable mail-order bump stocks and binary triggers? Okay, then we get a repeal of the Hughes Amendment so that we can buy the machine guns we really wanted anyway. All guns now require a person to be 21 to purchase? Okay, since everything has been standardized to handguns then that NFA category that requires tax stamps on short barreled long guns gets reclassified to non-NFA status, eliminating the tax stamp and 3-12 month ATF paperwork wait. Expand background checks? Okay, silencers are now non-NFA items also.
Make no mistake, at Bunkerville America was one negligent discharge away from a 4thGen civil war. One election hasn’t calmed the 2A crowd down THAT much.
The 2A crowd is NOT getting what it wants. The 2A crowd has been taken from since 1934, and not ONE THING has come back via legislation. Every single bit of ground reclaimed was either a court case or in the case of the AWB94, a sunset clause built in, otherwise it would still be in effect. What Trump is proposing is that we only lose less than we would have otherwise. That ain’t working anymore. Not one damn bit.
I think with Trump you have to wait and see. Trump’s strategy is to offer X to his opponents in return for Y and Z. Then the system stops X, and Z, and his side gets Y.
I expect before four years are out we will get silencers and National reciprocity. In eight, I would not be surprised to see NFA completely reworked to only affect full auto and select fire, instead of the retarded SBS/SBR/etc shit. A pistol with a stock being illegal is just dumb, and it will not surprise me to see that fixed. If that happens, it is possible the 86 manufacturing ban might go, which would be nice, and I would have little beef then with the gun laws in the nation.
You should update this. It looks like the point of Trump doing this was to make the democrats leap forward eagerly with their bill to ban everything and right now for the children.
You are right. Again, Trump is ten steps ahead of where I could even imagine being.