Gun Owner New Year’s Resolutions Can Help Increase Involvement and Effectiveness
It's the time of year when Americans are inclined to make resolutions. Some will try to lose weight, quit smoking, cut back on drinking, start an exercise program, go back to school, or find more rewarding employment. Those can all be worthy goals for gun owners to aspire to, but they neglect the preservation and restoration of legal recognition of the right to keep and bear arms. I submit that without unalienable rights, everything else is just the fine-tuning of privileges.
In years past I've come up with resolutions, each designed to highlight and further some aspect of RKBA. I'm going to share some of them again here, in no particular order, in the hopes that one or more of them will apply to the particular talents, interests, and/or inclinations of everyone reading them.
Attend an Appleseed or other skill-building event. None of us has "arrived" to where we couldn't use more qualified training. I also include in this non-firearms self-defense training. It never hurts to be aware, capable, and conditioned, and to have some basic reactions reflexively hard-wired into us.
Know your representatives at the federal, state, and local levels. Know how to contact them and do so when appropriate (assuming it's not a lost cause because you live in a Democrat hostage zone).
Write letters to the editor of your local paper to educate, to correct anti-gun misinformation, to support rare "pro-gun" pieces, and to bring their readership the truth. Read the paper's submission policy, to know where to send it to (email or "snail" mail), and also to know what their editorial guidelines are, for instance, if they specify a 250-word limit and the like.
Join a deserving "gun rights" group. The left has shown us the power of "community organizing." Join more than one if you can to cover national, state, and local issues. And be more than just a dues-paying member—get involved and help with time and effort. And meet new and like-minded friends.
Take a new person shooting. Be a true "commonsense gun safety" advocate. It's fun, it's rewarding, it doesn't take up too much time or expense, and afterward, you should have a person who is receptive to learning more, including why guns are important for more than just sport shooting. Related to this, teach development-appropriate safety to your children.
Obtain and read Second Amendment books. All serious advocates should have a good understanding of the history behind the Second Amendment, and there is nothing better for providing one than some well-researched and authoritative books.
Support legal efforts to defend the Second Amendment. Federal, state, and local governments have virtually unlimited resources at their disposal with which to attack our rights and then drag things through the courts. Find one or more groups fighting battles you believe in and track records of results, and help them help you.
Share information not covered by the "mainstream press." There is no shortage of anti-gun misinformation, and while sites such as this one do their best to correct that, comparative reach is often limited to an echo chamber. Do more than be just a consumer of such reports and articles, be a force multiplier and share links to those you find informative.
Support businesses that support us. There are plenty of "woke" anti-gun companies where supporting them is equivalent to giving aid and comfort to the enemy. It's not always practical to "boycott" all of them (for instance, we don't want to cut off our noses to spite our faces on some of the big tech stuff we rely on in our daily lives, like computers, phones, and the internet), but when possible, avoid businesses with "No Guns" signs, and patronize and spread the word about "friendly" places. Oh, and nobody "needs" Dick's Sporting Goods or Disney.
Demonstrate for the Second Amendment. Even though "avoid crowds" can be a good rule of thumb, there is no "one size fits all" and sometimes public demonstrations for or against gun-related measures can be helpful, especially if organized by those who have earned your trust and support. If you do attend, make safety a priority—work out an exit strategy in advance for if things get shaky, and by all means, be on guard against provocateurs looking for low-hanging fruit to exploit.
This is just a limited sample of things to consider and is in no way all-inclusive. Perhaps you will think of things to add that aren't addressed here, and if so, why not share them with the rest of us in the "comments" section, below?
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at "The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance," is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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