As I write this, it's been a little more than a year since I first discovered Ron Paul and blogged about some of his qualities, which I believe would make him a suitable President of the United States of America. Over the past months, Ron Paul's tide has risen and fallen, with the falling mainly due to lack of information given to the American people.
With the lies told about him, the blatant omissions of him, a leading candidate at the time, from at least one Fox News debate, and the mainstream news media's poor treatment of him, Ron Paul is no longer a viable candidate for President in 2008. More's the pity.
And so, we are faced with what is, in my mind, an unpleasant choice. John McCain has historically been no friend to gun owners or true Republicans (i.e. those loyal to the American Republic and the Constitution). Barack Hussein Obama has shown definite support for gun bans, and has spoken both in support of gun control, and - when politically convenient - in support of the Second Amendment's guarantee of gun ownership as an individual right.
So where do we go from here?
I'll tell you something: When I sat down to write this, I was prepared to grit my teeth and strongly recommend that gun owners vote for McCain. Everything reliable that I have heard from and about Obama has been frightening and unsettling on many more levels than "just" gun rights. But faced with the ugly choice between these two, I was leaning quite strongly towards McCain. Somehow, McCain's past sins against gun owners had diminished a bit in my memory.
But the more I learn, the more I despise our position as a people. The position I'm speaking of is clearly a choice between two evils, and to my mind both of our mainstream options, only one of whom will win in our sheeple-populated nation that is routinely led on by powerful news agencies with their own agendas, are bad ones.
So, the question I must try to answer is, which of these two poor choices would cause the least injury to gun owners... the least likely to damage our most basic of human rights. That is a toughie.
According to reliable reports, John McCain has an explosive temper, and routinely curses and rails against whatever opposition is placed before him. Hardly qualities that recommend him to higher office. In 2006, John LeBoutillier wrote in regards to McCain's erratic and explosive behavior, "As someone who has known McCain for 32 years, I can unequivocally state that he should be no where near the Oval Office." For the record, LeBoutillier is a Republican, former member of the House of Representatives, and is in favor of finding in a President "a true Reagan conservative."
In 2001, McCain was featured in an anti-gun ad sponsored by a gun-grabbing group in Washington, DC, urging people to lock up their guns. Needless to say, a gun that's locked securely away is a criminal's dream - it can't be used when it's needed in defense of home and family. He has sponsored and supported anti-gun and/or anti-freedom legislation in the past. Obviously, McCain is not a true conservative in any way.
Obama, as befits his appearance as a mainly empty suit (although a dangerous one), doesn't have the track record that McCain does. That's because he hasn't been in public "service" for all that long. But during his short time in the public eye in the present campaign, Obama has gone from supporting Washington, DC's gun ban law, to declaring his support for the Supreme Court decision which struck down that very law - and denying that he has even changed positions. Hmmm. Something tells me he's playing politics and only spitting out what he thinks we want to hear.
Obama hangs out with, and is backed by, some very anti-gun forces. And he has long supported city gun bans. In August, 2008, The Washington Post reported that "Mr. Obama supported a ban on handguns in 1996. In 1998, he backed a ban on the sale of all semiautomatic guns (a ban that would encompass the vast majority of guns sold in the U.S.) In 2004, he advocated banning gun sales within five miles of a school or park (essentially a ban on all guns sold in almost all the states). Possibly, even more importantly, he served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, probably the largest private funder of anti-gun and pro-ban groups and research in the country."
So - which candidate do we choose? It's not a pretty picture, folks. I don't like either of them. I think they are both liars, and that neither is a defender of - or even a big believer in - the Constitution. Which only makes me miss Ron Paul all the more.
In the end, I think I will have to vote for the candidate which I deem least likely to gut the nation and hand it over to gun-grabbers and/or Muslim terrorists, and who can hopefully be held in check when it comes to gun-banning. And even at that, it feels like a gamble. It even makes me a little queasy. But as of right now, my vote will go to McCain.
- Russ Chastain
