Lock and Load

No subject divides Americans as much as the right to keep and bear arms. During election season, American politicians have been known to give guns away free to their supporters.

Freedom. It’s a big word. It’s a key word in describing many Americans’ self-image. A word that has to be defended with any means necessary. The “Campaign for Liberty,” a lobbying group founded by Ron Paul states that there could never be freedom without the possibility of defending it.

Paul belongs to that group of prominent American politicians who advocate consistent liberalism. He sought the Republican nomination for president three times. He didn’t make it, but he has polarized the nation with his strict libertarian views, which have at their core absolute personal liberty.

Those liberties are, of course, best defended with a weapon, which is why Paul’s lobbying group is giving away an AR-15 semiautomatic military-style assault rifle — a dazzling instrument for defending the basic values of the American soul. Whoever wants to own the assault rifle — two magazines included — has until the end of April to sign up with Paul’s “Campaign for Liberty.” The offer is signed “For liberty, Ron Paul”

Firearms fans and the opponents of gun ownership are mutually exclusive in the United States and their battlefield is the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees all citizens the right to keep and bear arms. All politicians must position themselves either for or against that; there is no compromise position possible in this debate, especially not for those in the political right wing. And there’s an election coming up again this autumn.

Perhaps giving away a gun could bring in decisive votes. Tom Tancredo is running for Governor of Colorado with the support of Ted Nugent, who has referred in the past to President Obama as a “subhuman” and now shills for Tancredo.

“How would you like a new AR-15 — for free?” Nugent asks with the assault rifle instead of a guitar casually slung across his shoulder.

Then there’s Lee Bright sitting in the South Carolina state senate and longing to trade that for a seat in the United States Senate in Washington, D.C. Of course he’s a Republican with a grade of “A” from the National Rifle Association, as he boasts on his homepage. One of his supporters owns a Palmetto Armory AR-15 assault rifle, which, in the wake of the Newtown massacre, was supposed to have been banned. But that initiative went nowhere as of April last year.

Paul Broun of Georgia is a repeat offender. He already gave a way an AR-15 when he ran for the Georgia Senate seat he won. He then supplemented that with another Colt weapon last month. He has only been in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2007 and in November could move over into the Senate.

In the Sandy Hook Elementary School case, 20-year old Adam Lanza murdered 20 children, 6 school employees, his mother and finally himself. Since then, Mother Jones magazine reports that almost 200 additional children have died from gunfire. But who cares? The bottom line is that this is about winning political elections — and liberty.

Could a billionaire possibly face down this gun lobby? Could he do what Obama, the Senate and human rights organizations have thus far been unable to do? Michael Bloomberg believes it could be possible. The ex-mayor of New York City has been fighting for stricter gun laws for years and has even gotten involved with the issue of obese New Yorkers. And he has money to burn.

On Wednesday, Bloomberg said via The New York Times and NBC that he was about to invest $50 million (about 36 million euros) to form a grassroots organization to counter the gun lobby.

“We’ve got to make them afraid of us,” he said.

But the NRA is apparently unimpressed. “Everytown for Gun Safety,” the name of his new organization, isn’t Bloomberg’s first attempt to counter NRA policies. As early as 2006, he was a founding member of the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” organization.

Now Bloomberg wants to merge his old organization with the lobbyists “Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.” In order to protect his millions, his plan is to put the most money into the activist network at the grassroots level instead of costly media buys with the objective of convincing women and mothers.

With those who oppose his initiative, he is taking a diplomatic approach to ensure the public knows “Nobody is going to take anyone’s gun.”

But it’s unlikely the man who admitted to The New York Times that he firmly believes he has already secured a place in heaven will succeed. Where 58 percent of Americans favored stricter gun laws immediately following the Newtown massacre, support has fallen to just 49 percent today. Twenty murdered children are quickly forgotten in a country that has been debating the right to keep and bear arms for decades. Maybe that debate won’t end until a child is murdered by Ron Paul’s assault rifle.

But of course guns don’t kill people; they just defend their liberty.