I didn’t say anything about not trading with other countries, I think we should be doing more of that.

This is also another gun owner who will be casting a vote for Bob Barr (and Pat McCrory, whether he has the NRA’s endorsement or not).

Personally, I think the “Libertarian isolationist foreign policy”– in other words, don’t attack someone unless they attacked you first– should appeal to gun owners. Isn’t that one of the main reasons people own guns?

As much as I like the Libertarian philosophy they lost me after 9/11. They are wrong about how to deal with the Islamic extremists. So I’ll be voting for Palin (and McCain) this year. And to give my vote a little more importance I’ll be voting in Washington State this year.

There is a lot of overlap in the gun issue with National Greatness conservatism. It’s a message that resonates with a lot of gun owners. As an interesting experiment, I put out at the last gun show “Veterans for McCain” “Sportsmen for McCain” and “McCain/Palin”. The Veterans bumper stickers went faster than the sportsmen stickers. That says that quite a number of gun owners prefer to self-identify as veterans, or at least in terms of their support of McCain, identify with him as veterans. Not too surprising.

But I’ve talked to people who lament abortion and gay marriage as issues. People who pretty clearly are a lot more conservative than I am. A few have talked about wanting to see these Wall Street thieves taken out back and shot; not a statement supportive of economic libertarianism, I would say.

It’s actually been a real eye opener about exactly what kind of people are the ones we’re trying to reach, and the kinds of people that support John McCain. It’s at the same time encouraging, discouraging, and sometimes frightening, to see what the gun vote is really made up of. The real answer is ordinary Americans, with a lot of different opinions. You get a new appreciations for why politicians speak in platitudes — it’s just easy to say something that’s going to alienate a certain demographic. If you took everyone at all the shows, clubs, and various other places I’ve spoken with, and put them in a room and tell them to come up with a platform they could all live with, it would probably look a lot like McCain’s platform. It’s not perfect, but this is politics.

That sums it up nicely. So what happens when your group becomes very influential in creating policies in conflict with your ideologies? Oops.