There’s something inherently wrong about gun owners taking the anti-gun side of just about any Second Amendment topic. “I support the Second Amendment but…” usually means that you don’t, though there are times when what follows “but” isn’t an issue. (“I support the Second Amendment, but I wish the Founding Fathers hadn’t used that opening clause,” for example.)
The term Fudd was created to describe hunters who support bans on various weapons that are described as not useful for hunting, in part because these people exist, and they’re such a pain in the butt.
Why?
Because they lend validity to the anti-gun side of the debate. They skew poll results about what gun owners support regarding gun control laws, and so on.
The problem for these people is that they’re convinced the anti-gun side will just one day stop wanting gun control. The truth is, no one will be spared, and a prime example of this is what we’re seeing in Canada right now.
While shooting at targets at a gun club near Newmarket, Lise Mahoney describes how competitive sports shooters have been caught in the crosshairs of sweeping federal gun regulations, with ripple effects on a wider shooting sports ecosystem that includes Olympic pistol competitors.
The new regulations have not only impacted access to the guns used for IPSC competition, and is threatening the viability of facilities used for training and equipment maintenance for elite sports shooters in general, but experts say the regulations have also had unintended implications for Olympic pistol sports athletes.
Mahoney is among the chorus of sports shooters calling for more flexibility in current regulations and a broadening of who benefits from exemptions to the rules.
“They’re tools for a sport that I love,” she said of the handguns she uses for practical shooting, also known as dynamic shooting. “Once people are not able to replace their handguns, then they’re not able to compete and then the sport dies.”
Now, IPSC isn’t an Olympic event, but it is sport shooting. Unfortunately, only Olympic shooting sports have any level of exemption under these reforms.
The issue, though, is that Olympic shooting can’t exist well within a vacuum. It’s not a strong enough ecosystem in and of itself. Things like stores and ranges require sales to people who aren’t competing in relatively unpopular shooting pastimes, such as pistol shooting.
IPSC has a lot of support, and the fact is that they’ve been edged out completely under the law means that one sport that might actually sustain the rest is being strangled to death.
While that might not be by design–I’m trying not to assume intentions as much these days–the result is the same.
See, no one is going to be left alone by gun control. Not in the long run. Either they will intentionally do everything to end private gun ownership in all practical ways, or they’ll create such a system that the result will be little different. The intention won’t really matter in the end, though, because the results will still be the erasure of the Second Amendment in every way that actually matters.
When the courts won’t side with them, they’ll just wait until they can put their people on those benches and watch everything change, because there’s no issue with judicial activism when it’s your side doing it.
Then, the hunters who thought their precious deer rifle would be left along, or the competition shooter who thought their single-shot pistol would be exempt for all time, will find out that no one is going to be spared. Whether intentionally or as collateral damage, all gun owners will see their worlds shattered if the gun control groups get their way.
The Second Amendment says nothing about hunting or competition, but for some, that’s irrelevant.
What should be relevant, though, is just how difficult your beloved pastimes are in other countries with their various restrictions and recognize that there are people uncomfortable with the “freedom” those shooters possess.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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