Opinion
“Immigration and the importation of anti-gun voters present an existential threat to our Second Amendment rights,” constitutional attorney and Four Boxes Diner commentator Mark W. Smith asserted Saturday.
“Because the people that come into the United States from Latin America, from Europe, from Africa, from Asia, they have one thing in common, at least one thing in common, and that is they all come from cultures that do not have any sort of real private gun ownership, self-defense oriented gun culture,” Smith explains. “These are not the sort of people that are going to vote for anything other than more and more gun control.”
He’s offering more than opinion. That assessment is backed up by every credible poll and by real-world experiences in places like California, where engineered demographic changes have turned the state into a Democrat stronghold in a generation, with Democrats being the party calling for gun bans in its platform and enacting them whenever it gets the votes. Adding such new citizens to the voting rolls will result in supermajorities in state and federal legislatures that will then be able to pass all kinds of anti-gun edicts.
It will also result in nominations and confirmations of judges to the Supreme and federal courts who will uphold those edicts and reverse gains made to date. That’s happened before, and anyone who thinks Heller, McDonald, and Bruen will be immune is whistling past the graveyard of history.
We also can’t overlook the effect foreign national residents being counted in the census has on congressional representation.
This is why gun owners who say they’re for legal immigration, just not the illegal kind, are both kidding themselves and enabling a pathway to citizenship for Democrats and cheap labor Republicans to swindle them out of their rights. And that’s where we sometimes see pushback in comments below articles, arguing things like “I know people from [insert country of choice], and they own guns and go to the range.”
We all do. And undeniably, there are some great new Americans with a hard-won understanding of freedom that puts No Kings rally agitators and Moms Demand Action harridans to shame. That’s why my longstanding, and as yet unmet challenge excludes anecdotes and isolated examples. We’re dealing in millions here, and the predictably certain effect their immigration WILL have.
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And that is why the deliberate indifference shown by national and state “gun rights” groups is a failure of leadership. Some efforts have been made to date to do limited Spanish language outreach and the like, but these are totally inadequate when measured against what would be needed to get an effective message out to sufficient numbers of people to have a measurable political effect, especially when compared to reverse messaging from the media and predominant political influencers dominating the discourse. Fighting fire with droplets won’t stop the house from burning down.
For reasons only they can explain, the “Big Three” don’t want to touch immigration. NRA continues to give “A” grades and endorsements to politicians whose “good” votes on guns will be wiped out if their position on immigration ends up culturally terrafroming the political landscape. As for “no compromise” GOA, its former executive director made a commitment to factor that into its candidate assessments (begin @ 46 minutes in), but it appears the group under current management has no appetite to make communicating that a priority. And SAF/CCRKBA has in the past outright dismissed immigration as a concern warranting its involvement.
With the danger to recognition of the right to keep and bear arms clear if Democrats succeed in changing the electorate, claiming a “single issue” excuse is a cop-out. If the fear is that the media and Democrats will portray them as fascists and racists, that’s been happening for years, and no amount of conciliatory compromises is going to change that.
There is nothing wrong with being a culturist, that is, with acknowledging that some cultures and ideologies are superior at encouraging individualism, liberty, prosperity, and innovation over others. It’s what built the America the rest of the world wants to come to and take advantage of, most based on their political affinities, not understanding that it’s the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights that made it all possible.
Perhaps the prestige brought to the conversation by Smith, voted “Top Voice of the Second Amendment” two years in a row, will persuade the establishment “gun rights” organizations that it’s OK, and even respectable, to acknowledge the threat, take actions to neutralize it, and educate their members. Those of us with lesser recognition who have been waving that flag in vain for years should welcome his being able to influence them where we have not.
Perhaps that could be helped along by members contacting the 2A groups they support and asking them:
“What are you going to do to counter the existential threat both legal and illegal immigration pose to the Second Amendment, and what reforms will you expect politicians you support to champion?”
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About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
