By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
“It’s time to make the Second Amendment great again,” declared Alan Gottlieb, founder and Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Foundation.
He also chairs the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Gottlieb was playing on President-elect Donald J. Trump’s campaign slogan in the aftermath of Trump’s stunning grassroots political victory that will send him to the White House in 2017.
America’s gun owners are getting credit from Second Amendment organizations for making the difference in the election. Gun rights and firearms industry organizations have all issued statements congratulating Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, for what literally was a come-from-behind victory that most political pundits never saw coming.
“What happened Tuesday night was a reaffirmation that Americans can make the system work, and that this nation’s gun owners are a cornerstone of that system,” Gottlieb said in a statement following the Republican nominee’s victory.
“While America’s hard-working gun owners can celebrate the victory they helped make possible,” he continued, “we must remain mindful that the gun prohibition lobby, which is largely funded by elitist billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, will almost certainly double down on their efforts to erode our Second Amendment rights at the state level, whenever and wherever they can.”
In a separate statement, Chris Cox, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, put it bluntly: “Voters sent a loud and clear message that our gun rights are not for sale. Despite the unprecedented efforts by New York City billionaire Michael Bloomberg and the gun control lobby, the Second Amendment prevailed.
“In the face of threats against their constitutional freedoms,” Cox added, “NRA members and Second Amendment supporters rallied to elect a pro-gun president. Trump’s victory repudiates the assertion by gun control advocates that the political calculus regarding the Second Amendment has changed.”
Gottlieb congratulated NRA for its political efforts, noting, “Every gun owner owes a huge ‘Thank You’ to our good friends at the National Rifle Association for their efforts and expenditures to educate and guide voters.”
The National Shooting Sports Foundation also issued a statement, observing, “The American people have spoken. We have elected a president who has pledged to protect our Constitutional rights and a majority of both houses of Congress that will work to ensure that our individual right to keep and bear arms will be preserved.
“The work of those who love liberty and our nation’s hunting and shooting traditions is never over,” the NSSF statement continued. “Americans need to remain involved to help ensure that the defense of our Second Amendment remains strong and the lawful commerce in firearms is protected at all levels of government.”
Gun owners had felt threatened almost from the outset of Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton’s White House campaign. She unabashedly proclaimed her pride in the fact that the NRA was her enemy and declared during a private fund raiser in New York that, in her opinion, the Supreme Court “was wrong’ on the Second Amendment.
When she finally gave a concession speech Wednesday morning, Clinton urged her followers to keep fighting. She predicted that one day a woman would break through the proverbial “glass ceiling” to win the presidency.
Alluding to the fact that Clinton’s White House ambitions were largely stopped by the nation’s gun owners, Gottlieb quipped, “She bumped up against the ‘lead’ ceiling.”
With Trump in the Oval Office and Republicans in control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, Second Amendment activists anticipate that he will quickly nominate a suitable replacement to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Throughout the campaign, firearms owners were mindful that the future direction of the high court, and the Second Amendment, was in play. Trump may have the opportunity to fill more seats as aging justices might retire or pass.
Openings on then lower federal courts were also in play, and so might be legislation aimed at expanding concealed carry. Clinton’s opposition to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prohibits junk lawsuits against gun makers, wholesalers and retailers, is also no longer a threat.
