So I checked out a new gun blog after the author posted at Uncle’s group blog site. I disagreed with a post, but I thought it might be a generational thing. So I clicked through the link to the author’s main blog to confirm if that was the case. This is the first in a series of assessments and assumptions I think she’s absolutely wrong on. I would say I feel bad about it since she seems to be relatively new to the blogosphere (note the ‘o’ Nancy), but this first issue is not something where it’s okay to be wrong and no one will notice, it’s one that will cost us our rights. And that ain’t cool.

Nancy claims that NRA can now sit out of the presidential election. She believes that every gun owner in the United States knows every anti-gun position that Obama and Biden share.

There is really no need for the NRA warnings anymore as I’m sure no gun owner would even consider voting for the Obama-Biden option.

Naive? Maybe. Dangerous? Abso-freaking-lutely. She believes the issue is black-and-white:

There is the team that is pro gun ownership rights and the team that is against gun ownership rights.

Well, first of all, McCain has no declared running mate, so I’m not sure what “team” she’s talking about. She could be talking about the Barr-Root team, but many of the SNBIs even consider Barr too weak on the gun issue. Later in the post, she does seem to indicate she’s talking about McCain. So, if she has secret insider info on who the VP is, please, share.

But that’s nitpicking. She honestly doesn’t seem to recognize that most gun owners don’t stay informed on the issues that impact their rights. Even the ones who do often take other issues into account when casting a ballot.

Take for example a recent poll of sportsmen and their voting plans. Granted, the term sportsmen also includes anglers and folks who only own guns for outdoor sport instead of defense or other rights. However, they are a sizable population worth considering, especially since they are often lumped into the same category as gun owners who do follow the issues closely and vote single-issue in political circles. In fact, in NSSF’s release, they note that while sportsmen want to consider whether a candidate is an outdoorsman or gun owner in their vote, it’s not at the top of the issues they are concerned about this year. The economy, homeland security and the war in Iraq are the top concerns.

Anyway, back to the poll. NSSF rounds the number of sportsmen of voting age to 40 million. (It’s a safe upward estimate. The last USFWS numbers say 34 million, but their methodology passes over guys who don’t do it every single year.) The poll says that 31% of sportsmen will vote for Obama. That’s 12.4 million votes. Even taking into account the margin of error which would drop the percentage to to 27.9%, you’re still talking 11.2 million votes. If we go the other way with the margin of error, we end up with 13.6 million votes. Factoring in swing states, any of those is a massive number of votes.

Even among NRA members, the issue isn’t so black-and-white. A recent informal, unscientific poll that went out via the NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert showed that more than a handful planned to vote for Obama.  Unfortunately, the results aren’t accessible now that the new this week’s poll is posted, but I remember it being around 3% last time I looked, with another 9% or so considering a third party, not voting, or hadn’t made up their mind.  Now, this is a self-selected minority of email recipients, so it’s not a perfect illustration. However, it should still raise concern because the minority is of active NRA members who care enough to get weekly updates and we still find Obama supporters in that group.

Of course, her post never takes into the account the impact of third-party voters. She assumes that the only pro-gun ticket is McCain and that his work just became so much easier. Again, we go back to Barr. There are a few who consider him a sinner on the gun issue, but they are few and far between. There are more than a few who are actively considering voting for him in states that could be absolutely vital to the overall election.

According to the poll results for 10 battleground states released on Aug. 23, Barr is polling at 11 percent in New Hampshire and 10 percent in Nevada. Barr is also polling 8 percent in Ohio, and has similar numbers across the country.

While Barr won’t actually win any of those states, he does have the potential to pull enough votes that might otherwise go to McCain (not all would, but a sizable number would) and give the electoral votes to Obama. Those three states mentioned have 29 electoral votes. With no clear leader, that’s 29 electoral votes we can’t afford to lose.

So, no Nancy, it’s not clear to everyone that Obama is a bad choice. It’s also not clear to every pro-gun voter that McCain is a better choice than candidates who stand no chance of being elected.

It is clear that if you encourage NRA to pull out this race and sit idly by because the choice is so obvious to you personally that you don’t know jack about gun politics. We’ve got to remain politically relevant as gun owners. If we followed your advice and threw our hands up in the air and said, “Oh, it’s clear now! Our work is done,” then we’d have all of our worst nightmare gun control bills passed in the blink of an eye.

Maybe she’s just unaware, having not worked in politics or known any gun owners who aren’t well-informed. (If she has been active in politics, than I don’t even know what to say other than Lord help us.)  However, it doesn’t take much to look at the numbers and know that not only is her assumption not based in reality of the numbers, but that her thinking will cost us individual election battles and, eventually, the war.

Fortunately, the NRA won’t listen to Nancy. They will continue to educate gun owners and voters to let them know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden have extreme gun-banning records.

Unlike Nancy and many other gun owners I have met who assume that every other pro-gun person agrees with them and votes on the one issue, NRA will recognize that there are literally tens of millions of voters out there who haven’t gotten the message. Don’t be that guy or gal. Talk to your range buddies, make sure they know what’s at stake – especially with the Supreme Court. You’d be amazed and how many don’t know.

No obviously related posts.