The Patriot Post® · Keep Your Powder Dry

The 146th NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits kicked off yesterday in Atlanta, and continue through the weekend. Some 80,000 Patriots are expected to attend, including our own Mark Alexander. Donald Trump is there this morning to address the crowd that helped get him elected. There’s much to celebrate — Barack Obama’s anti-Second Amendment reign is ended, and Justice Neil Gorsuch now sits on the Supreme Court.

But we’re also reminded the battle is never over. We’re amused every year when some anti-gun leftist warns about an NRA-member crime wave or the general danger of so many thousand “anti-government gun nuts” descending on whatever city. National Review’s Jim Geraghty scoffed, “Not only has there never been a shooting at an NRA Annual Meeting, crime in the city usually goes down during that weekend. (If you were a mugger, would you try robbing NRA Convention attendees?)” He then highlighted several reports from previous conventions to back up those crime stats.

If only leftists were as respectful, peaceful and clean when marching for abortion or the climate or Science™ — never mind when they’re rioting against free speech on various college campuses. Which brings us to one obnoxious complaint from a professor emeritus at the University of Missouri, where free speech took it on the chin recently. He asked rhetorically, “Which organization is more dangerous to Americans — ISIS or the NRA?” His answer was that the NRA is closer to reaching its objectives, which he implies makes it worse than the Islamic State. Let that sink in.

About those NRA-backed objectives: Trump has a lot of lower court judges still to appoint, and there will be numerous court battles over gun rights in the days to come. Cities like DC and Chicago still remain as hostile as possible to the Second Amendment. The House has yet to pass the National Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act. High school shooting teams still must fight to keep from being excluded from yearbooks over pictures of guns. And anti-gun zealots are still flush with cash, waiting to exploit the next mass murder by a psychopath and cast blame on all law-abiding gun owners.

In short, liberty lovers can’t relax thinking we’ve won.