By Karen MacNutt,
Contributing Editor

The coming months are important for gunowners. We are entering the presidential election cycle. For the last eight years, the Republican Party dominated the national scene with control of the presidency and, until about a year ago, control of Congress. The policy of the Republican Party under Bush has been supportive of lawful gunowners. Not only has there been no significant anti-gun legislation passed, but the judges appointed by the Bush administration are less hostile towards the lawful ownership of guns than those previously appointed.
All this could change, literally, overnight. With the last mid-term Congressional elections, the Democrats gained small majorities in both the United States House of Representatives and the Senate. That means Congress is controlled by the Democratic Party.

Much of the wrangling we see in the press about Congressional inquiries and subpoenas for top members of Bush's cabinet is the Democrats trying to flex their muscle and embarrass the Republican Party. The Republicans have much to be embarrassed about, but the actions of the Democrats have little to do with moving the United States ahead and much to do about raw political showmanship.

Control of Congress is established when one party achieves a majority of members over the other. Even a one-member majority makes a big difference. With even a one-person majority, the head of the controlling party takes charge of the committee assignments. The controlling party decides who is on each committee, holds a majority on each committee and gets to decide who the committee chairman will be. By controlling the committee assignments, the party can force the loyalty of its members through a system of rewards and punishments. By controlling the committees, the party controls which matters will come before Congress and which will probably never see the light of day. To a large extent, the majority party controls what matters will come before Congress for a vote.

Congressmen are not as free as most of us think to vote their conscience or their constituent's wishes. Each party has a floor leader who is called the party "whip." The name is an apt description of what they do.
A change in the majority party in Congress is, in effect, a bloodless revolution. One of the great gifts of our Constitutional system is the ability to have radical changes in the direction of government without violence.
The United States is governed best when each house of Congress is controlled by a different party. With a division of Congress, compromise is required between the two parties to have anything go forward. When one party controls Congress and the other the Presidency, Congress tends to fight with the President over control of government policy. This can cause endless, politically driven, mud slinging. When one party controls all three branches, the president, as head of his own party, has too much power. An arrogance in governance sets in that is not good for the nation as a whole. The current problems of the Republican Party stem in part from their success in controlling both houses and the presidency. With that control came a failure to appreciate the need to gain consensus in governance or to consider opposing views. With total control comes total responsibility. When a policy fails, the party in control has no one to blame but themselves. The public sees this and is happy to turn them out of office at the next election.

We are a government of laws. Total control, however, seems to create the belief in some that the law does not apply to leadership. Although it is hard to enforce laws at the upper levels of government, public officials who think they are above the law are dangerous and should be removed from government at the next election. One party government is not good for the people.

The Republican dominance of the federal government has ended for now. It is quite possible it will be replaced by an equally inflexible Democratic Party dominance of the federal government.

In recent history, the Democratic Party has not been very considerate of lawful gun owners. Democratic strategists attributed their losses in Congress during the early Bush Administration to the Democratic leadership's anti-gun agenda. The word now is, "Stay away from the subject." This is not a change in philosophy. It is a change in tactics. The philosophy is still there. Don't be fooled by the phrase, "All I want is reasonable gun laws." To those that hate lawful gunowners, "reasonable" controls mean that you have to keep your guns at the police station or have the barrels welded shut. Anyone can dress as a duck hunter. Yes, our laws are lax enough that even Al Gore was able to get hold of a shotgun. That does not make the guy with the shotgun in the duck hunting suit a friend of lawful gun owners.

If the Democrats gain total control, we can expect their leadership will slip back into old habits. The gun control issue will heat up. If the Democrats gain control of both Congress and the presidency, gun owners are going to have a tough fight.

When the Republicans lost control of Congress to the Democrats at the mid-term elections, it was because people were unhappy with the way the Republicans were running the country. In particular, people were unhappy with the inflexible, failed policies relating to Donald Rumsfield and the war in Iraq. Many, including this writer, were unhappy with the massive governmental invasion of privacy in the name of fighting terrorism. Holding people without trial, using torture, warrantless wiretaps, spying on fellow Americans, and "no fly" lists of "suspected" terrorists drawn up in secret are only some of the assaults on civil rights introduced by the Republican leadership. Republicans, who were elected as the party of small government, initiated what is probably the largest assault on American civil rights since Roosevelt put Americans of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps.

The Democratic leadership interpreted the rejection of Bush's management of government as a mandate to demand an immediate withdrawal from Iraq without regard to the consequences. A collapse of the Iraqi government would be seen as a victory by the extremists of the world. In military terms, when one party withdraws from a conflict unilaterally, it is called defeat. To allow this to occur will say to those who blow themselves up to kill anyone they disagree with, "Good job." Violence is rewarded. Withdrawal from Iraq prematurely will not save lives. It will cost thousands of Iraqi lives. It will probably result in a radical Muslim government taking over that country and will increase terror attacks around the world. You can argue that we should not have gone to Iraq. You can argue that Iraq was not the source of terrorist activities when we invaded. Whether or not those positions were true at one time is irrelevant. We are in Iraq today and it is a hot bed of extremist activity.

We need good statesmanship to get us through this period in our history. Knee-jerk answers may be disastrous. Since the Democrats took control of Congress, we have not seen the statesmanship this country needs so desperately. All that we have seen is pure political posturing. The commitment to civil rights by the current Democratic leadership is abysmal. Proposals to create a secret list of people who will be blocked from buying guns based upon political concerns, strikes at the heart of the American concept of innocence until proven guilty. It goes against every basic civil right the Constitution was intended to protect. It is an invasion of privacy. It will have a chilling effect on free speech. It denies people the rights of property and self defense. It denies people access to the courts and right to the due process of law. We are allowing the "threat" of terrorism to destroy many of our most basic rights. Both parties are rushing down the path to a police state and it must stop.

All Americans of good will must be actively engaged in this election cycle. Who will be our next president is important. Who will control Congress is more important. Seek out and support good candidates. Ask them where they stand on the issues. Make your decision based upon that. Make their commitment to defending civil rights generally, and the Second amendment specifically, a top priority. Candidates don't like to talk about issues. They like to make a lot of wishy-washy, feel good statements that do not mean anything. That generally means they will blindly follow the party line. They will try to dodge your question about gunowners by saying things like, "I am a gunowner myself." Your follow up question should be, "Oh, that's great, what type of gun do you own?" Ask for more detail. Ask about trap and skeet, ask about ammo preference. Ask those questions that someone who has bought a gun but never taken it out of box except for a photo opportunity might have a hard time answering. If they say they support reasonable gun laws, ask if they will support a federal law that will create reciprocity for gun licenses nationwide. That is my idea of a reasonable law. It sounds reasonable. Why should your gun license not be like your driver's license? Cars kill a lot more people than guns yet your driver's license is good nationwide.

Find a good candidate and work for him or her. If there are no good candidates in your jurisdiction, go to a neighboring jurisdiction. Look at the incumbent's record on the gun issue and on civil rights issues. By "civil rights" I am not talking about race. Civil rights is a much broader issue than just questions involving discrimination. It means your right to be free of government intrusion; your right to be treated fairly; your right to have government decisions made openly; your right not to be arrested or held without charge; your right to speak your mind freely without fear of reprisal; your right not to be disadvantaged in anyway by the government without a fair hearing.

Support a new candidate over a bad incumbent. The new guy will not have the seniority that the incumbent had. Work with incumbents who have been supportive in the past. Try to distinguish between the candidates you can work with and those who are hopeless. Always keep in mind that most of those running are only interested in winning. Very few people in politics are committed to any kind of social philosophy. People who are just interested in winning are sensitive to the right kinds of political pressure but you have to keep that pressure on them constantly.

On balance, if all candidates seem to be about the same, vote for the candidate that might cause a shift in the party making up Congress. As the election gets closer, the press will start to speculate as to how strong a hold the Democrats have in the House and Senate. Pick the branch they are most vulnerable in and work to give the Republicans a majority in that branch.

At the same time you might want to get the new addition of the World Almanac and start updating the statistics used in the gun argument. Be more aware of what is going on at your state, your city or town. Participate in local government. Get involved in the primaries. They are as important as the final election as they determine who will be on the ballot. Go to the party caucuses of your party. Let those who are running know that we are involved in the election process and we care deeply about our freedoms.