On the El Paso Massacre

Short version: we either need to restrict guns or we need to get rid of the Republican Party for encouraging white terrorism.

I have a history as a Second Amendment supporter. I was one of the countless campaign volunteers who helped the Republican Party take Congress after the passage of the 1994 weapons ban. I helped organize and also led a successful group of NRA grassroots activists. I’ve fought against gun control laws at all levels of government.

I won’t even get a concealed carry permit, because I don’t ask the government for permission to exercise my rights.

Get the picture? I’m about as pro-gun as it gets.

My problem is the growth of right-wing terrorism that the Republican Party has been encouraging for years, especially under Donald Trump. I’ve seen people carrying rifles to political rallies, not to protect themselves but to intimidate their political opponents. Threatening violence for political purposes is terrorism.

I’ve seen these mass shootings by white supremacists who name Trump as an inspiration. These people are trying to make America scared. That’s terrorism.

I’ve heard Republicans threaten a civil war if they don’t like the outcome of American elections. More terrorism.

For a long time, one of my arguments against gun control has been that we need to address the root causes, like the failed war on drugs. My theory was that ending the drug war would stop a lot of gun violence, because prohibition encourages criminal violence. I still believe that ending the drug war would have enormous benefits for western democracy.

But now we have a new root cause of violence: radical right wing politics. Okay, right wing violence isn’t new, but it’s become a lot more popular in America, because the Republican Party, especially since the election of Donald Trump, encourages it.

As a pro-gun guy, for me the victory condition has always been to get to a place where neither of the two main political parties supports anti-gun laws. We had a chance to do that under Barack Obama. He was nowhere near as actively anti-gun as Bill Clinton had been. If the National Rifle Association had been doing its job properly, it could have started building bridges with the Democrats through Obama. Face it, Obama liked to see himself as a facilitator. He’d have loved to build a working relationship with the NRA.

But the NRA decided to join the GOP in demonizing Obama, in trying to scare white guys like me into thinking that he was coming for our guns. They helped fan the flames of hate and paranoia that led to a loathsome traitor like Trump being put in the White House. They even worked with the Russians to accomplish that.

The violence that is leading more people to call for gun control these days is a direct result of the hate and fear spread by the very people who oppose gun control. Like the war on drugs, the Republican war on decency has backfired.

My argument against more gun control used to be lets stop the drug war and see if that helps. Now my argument is lets get rid of the GOP.

Without a sane conservative party in America, that would mean putting the Democrats in charge, and that will almost certainly lead to more anti-gun laws. I’ll risk that. America has a better chance of surviving that than we do of surviving the GOP.