If there’s one thing to be said about the attempt by New York Attorney General Letitia James to dissolve the National Rifle Association, it’s this: It’s a concession about the Left’s lack of arguments in favor of restricting our right to keep and bear arms. Don’t get us wrong — this attack on the NRA is a frightening abuse of government power, and if it succeeds, the precedent could be used against other gun-rights groups at first, then expanded to just about any conservative group. But the big message is that the Left has given up on ideas in favor of sheer power to scream, “Shut up!”

That expansion could be what James and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo intended all along. But does anyone really think James would be trying to dissolve the NRA if she had winning arguments in favor of gun control? Would Cuomo have waged his campaign, using Parkland as a pretext, if he were successfully persuading Americans to support his anti-Second Amendment agenda?

Let’s look back over the past decade and that pattern can be seen elsewhere. When the Tea Party was raising concerns about the reach of government and how much was being spent, did Barack Obama have counterarguments? If he did, he must have not been confident in their ability to carry the day. Why? The IRS instead targeted the Tea Party for harassment.

When Obama couldn’t pass gun control after the horrific Sandy Hook massacre, mostly because grassroots Patriots stood up and refused to let millions of law-abiding Americans be punished for a crime they didn’t commit, he didn’t try to persuade Americans to rethink things, nor did he want other solutions. Instead, Operation Chokepoint was used, and a newer version, wherein companies are threatened with boycotts unless they go along with anti-Second Amendment extremists’ demands, is currently being wielded. Obama, by most accounts, is a talented speaker. But why wasn’t he using that rhetoric to persuade?

When conservative groups had success in Wisconsin, instead of their free speech being met with more free speech, they instead faced abusive investigations from rogue prosecutors. And while the Wisconsin Supreme Court halted the witch hunt, justice for those affected during the “John Doe” scandal remains elusive. The arguments in opposition to radical environmental legislation were met not with counterarguments but with RICO investigations from left-wing state attorneys general. Then, of course, there is Cuomo’s use of bank regulations to try to bankrupt the NRA. When David Daleiden used typical techniques undercover journalists use (see shows like “60 Minutes” or “What Would You Do?”), the response from Planned Parenthood wasn’t to use its First Amendment rights. Instead, the abortion mill sicced California’s attorney general at the time, one Kamala Harris, on Daleiden.

Again, we see a pattern where counterarguments, debate, and the normal back and forth that sets our republic’s course were not used. Instead, government power was brought to bear to attack one side of the debate on a hot-button issue.

We, finally, of course, get to Spygate. Again, rather than an attempt to persuade Americans, we see a resort to government power to take people out of the arena of ideas. Just last week, Judicial Watch reported that the FBI investigated Donald Trump’s tweets criticizing the investigation. Can you say “retaliation”? Silly us for thinking the First Amendment protected criticism of government actions.

This pattern leads to some serious questions: Would people who had confidence in the strength of their arguments or in their powers of persuasion resort to wielding the power of government against those who dissent through the means protected by the First Amendment? Or is the pattern instead an abusive way of admitting that leftists have no defense of their agenda and no interest in the normal way of addressing good-faith disagreements over policy and principle, leading them to resort to coercion?

The cold, hard truth of the matter is that the First Amendment rights of grassroots Patriots are on the ballot this November.