After weighing my choices as to whether to sit out the presidential vote or not, I’ve decided that for the first time since 1992 I am going to vote for the Democrat on the ticket.

Some of you may be gasping right now.  That’s OK.  It took me a while to come around to the decision to vote for McCain.  Oh…. you thought I was talking about Obama?  Heh.  He never had even a snowball’s chance in hell that I’d vote for him.  Now I’m not being completely facetious when I call McCain a Democrat.  He sounds a lot like the Democrat party of 20 or 30 years ago.  Not the quasi-socialist fringe leftists we are faced with today.  So it’s not so much that I fully support McCain but that I cannot sit by and allow Obama to gain access to the Presidency.  That way lies madness.

I’m not sure there’s a single policy of Obama’s that I agree with (or that doesn’t have me yelling expletives whenever I hear it), but of all his quasi-socialist baggage, it’s his anti-freedom, anti-gun stance that I find the most offensive.  Of course, Obama has been careful to try to work around his history on this, with weaselly statements about how he’s not going to take your ‘hunting guns.’  Which is double-speak for the fact that he is coming after everything else. 

I’ve noticed that both he and his supporters are quick to change the subject when guns come up.  I’ve been particularly fond of their tactic of insinuating that it’s stupid to care about guns when the economy is in such bad shape (Oh, but Obama supports the Second Amendment…. hey look… it’s a bank collapsing!).  But I use the issue of the right to keep and bear arms as the primary test of how a candidate views his fellow citizens, and whether he thinks them capable of any semblance of self-governance.  Only after he or she passes that test do I then consider all of the other issues. 

When anyone asks why I place so much emphasis on the right to keep and bear arms, I always end up referring back to an old essay by L. Neil Smith, entitled Why Did it Have to be … Guns?:

Over the past 30 years, I’ve been paid to write almost two million words, every one of which, sooner or later, came back to the issue of guns and gun-ownership. Naturally, I’ve thought about the issue a lot, and it has always determined the way I vote.

People accuse me of being a single-issue writer, a single- issue thinker, and a single- issue voter, but it isn’t true. What I’ve chosen, in a world where there’s never enough time and energy, is to focus on the one political issue which most clearly and unmistakably demonstrates what any politician—or political philosophy—is made of, right down to the creamy liquid center.

Make no mistake: all politicians—even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership—hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it’s an X-ray machine. It’s a Vulcan mind-meld. It’s the ultimate test to which any politician—or political philosophy—can be put.  (Emphasis added)

So, of the choices available to me, I’ve decided to take Mr. Squishy Loophole over Mr. Evil Ban-it-all.  It was really the only choice someone like me could make.  So, given that, I will make my one and only political call-to-action of the season:  If you’re a gun owner, or you believe in freedom, and you vote for Obama, you are essentially cutting your own throat.  Don’t come crying to me in the middle of an Obama administration when he gets another AWB passed, or finds a way to hamper or encumber concealed carry across the country to the point where it’s practically useless.  I’m not going to exhort you to go join a campaign or to join a party or to do canvassing or phone banking.  I’m not a joiner and I’m not going there.  But whatever you do, don’t vote for evil.  No matter how smooth, slick, and enticing it may be.