Liberal Campaign Looks To Silence Gun Owners at Voting Booth
The American left believes that the mere act of asking for identification to cast a ballot is a form of targeted disenfranchisement. Ironic, then, that a group of its own seeks to disenfranchise voters exercising their legal right to concealed carry.
According to USA Today, a gun control organization called Guns Down America is leading a social media campaign to report anyone who decides bring a firearm into a polling place — even if there’s no law against it.
“The social media campaign is encouraging voters who see people with firearms to text ‘Guns down’ to 91990,” USA Today reported Friday.
“Reports will be sent to nonpartisan election protection experts, who may contact authorities or send a lawyer to the polling place.”
We’re launching a new campaign to make sure everyone can exercise their right to vote free of armed intimidation. Check it out here: https://t.co/3wxVcHBBlk #gunsdownatthepolls
— GunsDown (@gunsdownamerica) October 19, 2018
Given that, according to USA Today, there are only six states that expressly prohibit firearms at polling places — Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas — one might wonder what the reason is behind the sudden push to intimidate voters, voters who are clearly going to lean Republican.
The director of Guns Down America, Igor Volsky, made it clear what the issue was: Donald Trump is president.
“Given the troubling political rhetoric we’ve seen over the last two years, and that guns are far too easy to obtain, this campaign will help the majority of Americans who believe that fewer guns keeps us safer fight back and cast their ballots free from fear of intimidation,” Volsky said.
There are several ironies here, beginning with the fact that Volsky thinks the real threat this election cycle comes from conservatives.
Yes, they’re the ones we’ve seen chase politicians from restaurants. Every person we saw yelling at cornered legislators during the Kavanaugh hearings was a card-carrying member of the NRA, right? I’m sure when Maxine Waters angrily told a crowd to harass members of the administration this past summer, she followed that up with a declamation that they’d pry her gun from her cold, dead hands.
Another irony involves the fact that voter intimidation is a federal crime, while only a handful of states have laws against concealed carrying into a polling place. Given that carriers represent a very specific social group that has very clear voting patterns, it’s not a huge leap to imply this campaign comes dangerously close to violating federal statutes.
If you were to build a theoretical case against Guns Down America for voter intimidation, you could also cite the fact that there’s no problem this “campaign” is going to solve. Incidents involving firearms at voting places are so rare as to be nonexistent. It seems unlikely anyone except the most melt-prone of snowflakes is really in need of legislation so they can “exercise their right to vote free of armed intimidation.”
Yet, Volsky admits that his goal is to eventually ban guns from all polling locations. Why?
God forbid a mass shooter decides to hit a polling place — how is a law really going to stop it? If a crazy person decides he’s going to use “armed intimidation” at the polls, what’s a law going to do about it? The only thing this would eliminate is the possibility that someone else in compos mentis and in possession of a firearm could stop a tragedy from unfolding.
I doubt any of these considerations crossed the mind of one Igor Volsky. This was all about sending a message — if you want to exercise your Second Amendment right to concealed carry and your state allows you to do it in a polling place, someone’s going to report you.
The idea that “nonpartisan election protection experts” (considered nonpartisan by whom, one wants to ask) or attorneys might dispatch someone to intimidate you for exercising your legal rights is positively Orwellian in its bent. The final irony is that Volsky says his group is doing this because of the “troubling political rhetoric we’ve seen over the last two years,” yet he’s doing nothing but adding to it in the name of tipping the scales in the midterms.
Whatever liberal doesn’t condemn this sick stunt has lost any authority to speak about voter ID or disenfranchisement ever again.
As for gun owners, this is yet another augury of just how desperately your vote is needed this Nov. 6.
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