In the aftermath of the September recalls in Colorado, We saw yet again that gun control isn’t a winning issue for anyone. After State Senators John Morse and Angela Giron were thrown out, defenders of the Second Amendment set their sights on Sen. Evie Hudak, but it wasn’t before anti-gun advocates waged a campaign of intimidation and libel against recall supporters. In the end, the outright thuggery to keep their agenda alive in Colorado was all for naught; Hudak saw the writing on the wall and resigned.
Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review wrote on November 27 about Mike McAlpine, who was quarterbacking the recall efforts at the time, who said:
“[W]e have multiple cars monitoring us at our offices and filming us from the parking lot…this is not a one-off event. We hold sign-and-drive events on the sidewalks near to busy intersections, and we hold signs inviting people to pull over and sign the petition. Our opponents have taken to blocking us: as cars pull in, they run up to the driver’s side door and physically stand next to the door so that the person inside cannot open the door and come outside.”
Elsewhere, opponents have formed human chains in order to block anyone who wants to sign. “They yell at the person while they’re at the table trying to sign, or blow an airhorn [sic] in their ear,” McAlpine added. “There have been a half-dozen examples of that. In addition, when we go out to knock on doors and present the petition, they will follow us down the sidewalk and scream and yell.” Recently, McAlpine told me, protesters encircled a young black man who was collecting signatures. “They yelled at him, ‘you killed Trayvon! You killed Trayvon!’”
The anti-recall groups also took to distributing flyers accusing those collecting signatures of being sex offenders:
Yeah, stay classy, left-wingers. Yet, perhaps the reason why gun control advocates can’t gain traction is the fact that gun violence really isn’t a major issue.
It’s still disputed that right-to-carry laws decrease crime (I disagree), but there’s no doubt that gun violence has reached a 20 year low; even Chicago is seeing their homicide rates drop. In a surprising piece from the Washington Post last May, they cited actual facts about firearms:
The report, by the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, painted an encouraging picture of long-term trends at a time of divisive political debate over guns and legislation to regulate them. Firearms-related homicides declined 39 percent between 1993 and 2011, the report said, while nonfatal firearms crimes fell 69 percent during that period.
[...]
[F]irearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, while nonfatal firearm crimes declined from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011. The drop extended to schools: Homicides at schools declined from an average of 29 per year in the 1990s to an average of 20 per year in the 2000s.
Yes, the Post had to add some liberal drivel into the piece, but the facts were undeniable. In Colorado, the facts are also crystal clear; gun control isn’t a winning issue and Evie Hudak jumped ship before she herself was scalped.