Hail To The Chief III. - Kneejerk Reaction

On many of the gun forums that I frequent such as The High Road, The Firing Line, and The Gun Counter, the word is flying around that gun stores are being stormed in response to the election results. I emailed with my friend who works at H&H Gunrange about the current situation. This is an enviable facility, dedicated to firearms education, practice, and sales, in a safe, family-friendly environment. Their sales floor is amazing. Anyone who has the slightest interest in firearms should pay them a visit if they ever happen through the Okc area.

What I could ascertain from the rumors on the forums is that pretty much every gun shop had been completely cleaned-out by customer demand by the weekend. This spawned a personal desire to do some research on my part. My wife and I paid visit to a couple of pawn shops that we frequent, looking at firearms. Both of them had dramatically reduced inventory, but were not out of firearms. My friend said that AR-15 inventory is "thin", that they have but one AK-47 left in inventory, and that they are sold out of Glocks and several other handguns. He said that it is as though they have done a month's worth of business in half a week. Contrary to what I had read on the internet, most of the sales seem to be among people who were planning on their purchases already, but the election results simply rushed their planned actions.

On his website, Obama has stated that he intends to push for another assault weapons ban, but to make it permanent this time around. My wife pointed out that there have been some er... problems on Obama's website. It is my hope that the clear message that The American People have sent is that we do not intend to let go of our Second Amendment Rights. Mr. Obama is not at all a stupid person. I believe that he is a short-sighted, arrogant, naive elitest, but not stupid in the least. I want to believe that he sees the message and is reconsidering some of his stances, and that is the explanation of the site being down this morning.

It is not at all uncommon for a politician to change their stances on certain issues due to public response. Frankly, that is the mark of a good leader. These people work for us. When they see that they are making us unhappy, they should consider modifying their goals. As of this moment (11/10/2008 at 13:07), his website seems to be mysteriously devoid of any talk of weapons bans. A quick search on the site for "assault weapons" brings up short biographies on each of Barack Obama and Joe Biden. The "Agenda" tab of the site shows nothing concerning future weapons bans. As a last-ditch effort, searching on the keyword "weapon" adds a third piece to the above mentioned search results. This third one notes that they plan on keeping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

Could it be that this man intends to listen to The People after all? We can only hope. It was an electorate landslide, but a slim margin of the popular vote. The fact of the matter is that at most, the very slight majority voted for him. There are still doubts that it was even that many of us. It would serve this upcoming administration well to listen to The People. Whether an assault weapons ban is still in the works or not is not clear right now, but the message has been sent, and seems to have been received.

I believe that we all believe in change, but some of us want the right kind of change. There is a huge group of us that don't want some vacuous, mysterious, unknown change. I will keep praying for these men, and I will keep up the hope that we see positive change. I'm not holding my breath, but I do still want to be wrong about them. I, like many others, have been frightened about some of the change that may come with this passing of the torch, but am nearly as frightened of the possible reactions to such change. I don't want to see a civil war or a return of terrorist attacks. I don't want to go into exile because of my beliefs. Granted, these would be radical reactions, but the change that he seems to have proposed is radical as well.

Only time will tell, and we have not cleared the rapids by a long shot. We must hold on to hope, and we must hold this new administration accountable for what kind of change is acceptable. That is the bottom line. In the meantime, I know that many will be bolstering their arsenals, stocking up on weapons, ammunition, and high-capacity magazines. I can't say that I blame them in the least, and I hope that it is a clear message to those that might attempts to infringe upon the rights to such things. We may have voted in different ways, but ultimately, we are all in this boat together. If we row in different directions, who knows where we'll end up? Pray for whatever is right, hope for the best, and communicate with those that we have appointed as our leaders - by any and all means possible.