And the really angry part is how the Left will fight to the death over abortion and make it some type of "right", when there is ZERO mention of abortion the Constitution. Forcing taxpayers to subsidize it and making it legal across all 50 states.
Republicans and conservatives need to start getting emotional and start using the Left's tactics on abortion and use them for defending the 2nd Amendment. Stop quoting John Lott and spouting statistics about how guns save lives. Start talking about how it's BS that Hollywood celebrities and politicians get armed security detail but not you to protect your home and kids.
We definitely need to be looking at our tactics. We’ve been winning the political struggle more or less, but it’s the cultural war that is most important. Just 30 years ago, half the country was in favor of an outright ban of handguns, it was illegal to carry a pistol outside the home in half of the country, even in Texas, a conservative Republican president signed a machine gun ban, and we still had the Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban in our future.
Now, concealed carry is legal in some way in every state in the union (with a growing number of states going to permitless carry), and the assault weapons ban is a dead issue nationally. Some of that is successful electoral politics, but some of that is also because the younger generation (I hate the term “Millennial”) is actually more comfortable with concealed carry and less supportive of assault weapons bans than older generations. After all, when I was a kid, only criminals carried concealed pistols and I don’t think I knew anyone who owned an AR-15 (or any semit-auto rifle other than a Ruger 10/22), but the younger generation has grown up around legal concealed carry without incident.
However, while there are more privately-owned guns than there used to be, and ownership of ARs and other scary-looking “assault weapons” has become fairly mainstream, the percentage of Americans who own guns is actually in decline. That is a trend that needs to be reversed if our rights are going to be secure.
Our rights won’t be safe until private ownership and carrying of guns is viewed as unremarkable. Bascially, we can’t breathe easy until the day a citizen can walk through Times Square openly carrying without a second look. We certainly can’t breathe easy when two thirds of Americans don’t have so much as a .22 in their homes.