Advocates for firearms owners warn not voting “rolls out the welcome mat for tyrants.”
In a state that former President Donald Trump lost in 2020 by only 80,000 votes, more than half a million Pennsylvania gun owners are not registered to vote according to an analysis by the group Women for Gun Rights.
Advocacy groups for Second Amendment activists have argued the polarization of political parties regarding firearms ownership, in which Republican politicians favor maximizing individuals’ rights to firearms while Democrats “have called for sweeping bans”, has gotten worse.
The gap between firearm ownership and voting registration could decide the fate of the presidential election according to Vote4America advisor Baker Leavitt, who told the District of Conservation podcast that a sizeable number of gun owners are “very animated in social media, they have a lot of opinions, but they don’t go out to vote.”
Leavitt believes registering just 2% “of all licensed hunters and get them to vote” would turn be favorable for Trump.
Rockstar and conservative activist Ted Nugent warned that those who own firearms and/or hunt but do not vote are “roll[ing] out the welcome mat for tyrants and Marxists” to curb or eliminate the Second Amendment.
With Vice President Kamala Harris now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, her previous stances and comments on guns and gun ownership have resurfaced. While campaigning for president in 2019, Harris voiced her support for a mandatory buyback of AR-15 and similarly styled rifles. A mandatory buyback program would require citizens of specific firearms, purchased legally or illegally, to “sell” the firearm to a government in exchange for cash or items of similar monetary value. She has since renounced that view but still supports “an assault weapons ban.”
The national firearms-owner advocacy group National Rifle Association has called Harris “an anti-Second Amendment extremist” who, as San Francisco District Attorney, supported an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the Heller case, supporting Washington D.C.’s handgun ban. The court ultimately overturned the ban, saying it was unconstitutional.
Harris still has garnered support from anti-gun groups, including a $15 million commitment from gun reform group Giffords, founded by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords who was shot at a public constituent meeting.
