Publicola on a compromise too far: Alan Gottlieb's "Neville Chamberlain impressions ain’t anything to be proud of."

Background Check Appeasement

It has come to my attention that there are certain segments of the gun owning community that feel conceding on the issue of background checks is a politically and pragmatically wise course of action. The idea is that since gunowners were outspent in Washington state in the fight over passage of I-594 that such losses are inevitable in other states, therefore if we support some form of universal background check we can reduce the damage done by an I-594-like law. The most prominent proponent of such an idea is Alan Gottlieb of SAF and CCRKBA fame, but he is not alone. To this notion I must not only say “No”, but “Go to hell no”.

Publicola's analysis of how we got here is dead on.

In fact I’ll assert that the appeasement strategy the NRA and others championed in the 1980’s and 1990’s has led us to this precipice we’re currently facing. If the NRA had not supported background checks in the form of the NICS then we’d have much more solid footing to stand on now as we oppose an expansion of those background checks. That concession makes it confusing for fence sitters as well as some gunowners to understand the NRA’s opposition to “universal” background checks. If back then they had fought it’s possible they could have lost, but they (and we) would be in a better position now to fight this most dire threat to our culture and our Rights. More likely though, is they could have fought and won, but they succumbed to the appeal of compromise, the lure of appeasement.

I bring this up because Gottlieb and others – undoubtedly some within the upper tiers of the NRA – are asking us to repeat the same errors of the 1980’s and 1990’s; claiming that defeat is inevitable so we have to compromise to make a bad law less bad. It was a mistake then that we’re still paying for now, and it’d be a mistake now that in 20 years would be seen as the harbinger of our doom.